Expert: Dmitry Livshits - 12/3/2011

Question
i have 2 china silver dollar coins. there is alot of information about these coins on the internet... about the number of "characters" on the coin.

for example one post says, "Even if you can not read Chinese, the coins made in the 3rd year (1914) are easily identifiable because there is only six characters above the bust of Yuan Shi Kai. Subsequent years all have seven characters, due to the addition of the character “造” (which means “Made during…”)."

i have 2 questions about the value of my coins:

1. what can you tell me about 1 of them that has 8 "characters".

2. how do you determine the year? what does the year symbol look like?
(as described the coin was produced from "1914 to 1921, but only four dates appear on the coins: 3rd year of the Republic of China, 8th, 9th and 10th year."

Answer
Hi Dot,
The ones with 6 characters are Republic of China general issues. The one in the picture with two additional characters is of the Kansu province type. Unfortunately it also appears to be a modern replica, as some details about it are not right. Appears to be cast in a mold rather than struck on a piece of silver. Have you weighed the coin?
The year on these yuan Shih-Kai coins is the second character from left of the 6 middle characters above the head. This one is dated 1914 (year 3 - three horizontal dashes.

Here's a useful reference for Chinese numerals: http://www.chinese-word.com/numbers_1_100/html/index.html

Thanks for the question! =)