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Looks like I may have found my first 1700s coin. I researched this coin at www.calgarycoin/reference/china/china8.htm and it appears to be from the reign of Emperor Kao Tsung (Ching Dynasty) who lived from 1736 to 1795. Calgary coins refers to this as a S-1464 Boo Ciowan coin minted in Bejing. Any Chinese coin experts out there?
I am no expert but I have one just like it and found the same info you did. It's my oldest coin !!! I was told that when they built the first railroads that they used alot of Chinese workers and that was probably how the coin ended up here in Texas.
Hey neighbor, I'm in Oklahoma. That's interesting that you found one also. It must be a fairly common coin. Calgary coins valued it as being worth $2.00 to $2.50. A dollar per 100 years I guess.
Hey cool this one looks almost identical to the one I found that i posted about a while back. http://www.findmall.com/read.php?63,1682142
Nice find!
helgriffan
If you go to the Calgary coins website I noted above you can probably ID your coin. The photos of the coins on that site are great and so are the descriptions.
You know, when I found the coin I just thought "Huh, a Chinese coin." stuck it in my pocket and when on hunting, not even realizing that I'd just found my oldest coin ever (by almost 100 years).
Yep I did ID mine. I have the id posted down later in my post. Its by far the oldest coin I have ever found and pry ever will to be honest. Unless I move somewhere else. lol Thanks for the info though
helgriffan
Agseeker said:
Helgriffan,
If you go to the Calgary coins website I noted above you can probably ID your coin. The photos of the coins on that site are great and so are the descriptions.
You know, when I found the coin I just thought "Huh, a Chinese coin." stuck it in my pocket and when on hunting, not even realizing that I'd just found my oldest coin ever (by almost 100 years).
Sorry, I looked at your link but didn't go far enough down. Looks like our coins are from the same time period. Like you, unless I move to a different state, this will probably be the oldest coin I ever find. My previous oldest coin was a 1887 Indian Head cent that I found in Tulsa years ago.
Don't let the dates fool you. They have next to zero bearing on when those coins were lost. They show up by the handfuls on the west coast wherever chinese mining and RR worker communities sprung up (or china-town districts of older towns here). I've found hundreds of them. And yes, they can routinely have dates going back to the 1700s (or even 1600s I think), because they went by "dynasties" (as opposed to specific years) which can be as long as 50 or 70 years, or whatever. And they must've made those things by the millions over in China, because they show up a lot here. There's no value in them, except as an age indicator for your spot. They were only made up to the 1910's I think in China, so you can ascertain that wherever you found that, you were in a strata/zone which can give up barbers or seateds.
The coin came out of the ground pretty clean, no corrosion. I just washed it off under running water and lightly scrubbed it with a soft toothbrush to clean off the dirt. What you see is pretty much how it came out of the ground. Wish I could say as much for the US coins I find around here. The red clay plays havoc on them, even the silver coins come out dull and stained.
