Friday, December 3, 2010

Chinese Cash Catalogs

Zhou Diye (formerly xiangxiangkafeizha at eBay) has some valuable Chinese cash catalogs for sale at his webpage. I will review them, starting from left to right, top row.

First, I want to say that if you are already using my Northern Song Dynasty Cash Variety Guide you will be able to use all of these catalogs, because they use the same Chinese numismatic descriptions for varieties. All these catalogs are variety catalogs, and thus quite helpful.

1. 大明泉谱 Da Ming Quan Pu (Coins of the Ming Dynasty) — A very complete variety catalog of Ming and Ming Pretenders. I use it to catalog my own reference collection. Having this catalog, you will be able to sort through bulk quantities of Ming period cash intelligently. For a full review of this catalog, click HERE.

2. 北宋铜钱 Bei Song Tong Qian (Copper Coins of the Northern Song Dynasty) — The best variety catalog for Northern Song cash to have come out of China. Different from my catalogs which are based on the Japanese original Kosen Daizen, but just as helpful. For a full review of this catalog, click HERE. I use the official hardcover publication. The edition sold by Zhou Diye is a ‘private’ reprint.

3. Qing Dynasty Palace Cash and Xian Feng Large Cash — Two reprints of older works, the second volume in this set of two is more useful than the first.

4. Qing Dynasty: Shunzhi to Kangxi — A reprint of an excellent work that can be useful as a supplement to Burger's Ch'ing Cash until 1735.

5. Qing Dynasty: Shunzhi and Kangxi to Qianlong — A reprint in two volumes of an old Japanese catalog that will be useful to Qing specialists, as a supplement to Hartill's Cast Chinese Coins.

6. 开元通宝图说 Kai Yuan Tong Bao Tu Shuo (Kai Yuan Variety Catalog) — The only available variety catalog for Tang Dynasty and other Kai Yuan Tong Bao cash, about 2000 varieties are cataloged, with rubbings, rarity guide, descriptions and variety numbers, easy to follow Chinese text. It's the best I have yet found for this subtle series.

7. Wu Zhu Variety Catalog — Another ‘private’ reprint of what appears to be a very comprehensive catalog of all the coins of the wu zhu type. Seeing it almost makes me want to collect wu zhu cash again, but my commitment to the study and collecting of Northern Song cash takes up most of my numismatic time.

For additional remarks about catalogs useful in Chinese classical numismatics, see my post Buy the Book Before You Buy the Coin.

Former eBay Seller: xiangxiangkafeizha

I just received an email message from a (former) eBay dealer in Chinese coins, who has always been a reliable source of authentic pieces, never selling fakes. His name is Zhou Diye, and his eBay name was xiangxiangkafeizha. If you go to my blog Fake Chinese Cash on eBay, you will see that I have rated him as a 1st Class dealer, always genuine coins only.

Mr Zhou advises me that he has a new webpage for selling Chinese cash, and so I am bringing it to your attention, with my recommendation. The page is called Diye's Coins Shop, and you can link to it by clicking HERE. I don't understand why eBay tolerates the selling of fake Chinese cash and suppresses or in other ways discourages dealers in authentic Chinese coins.

Besides what he lists on his new webpage, you can also contact him with special requests, and he will always give you good service at a good price.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Update: 大明泉谱 Dà Míng Quán Pǔ

This catalog is again available on eBay. Here is the listing.
It has been about 10 days since I received my copy of 大明泉谱 Dà Míng Quán Pǔ, a Ming Dynasty cash variety guide from the PRC. The following is an update of my review of this publication based on actual use.

As I remarked when introducing this catalog in the previous post, it's an inexpensive knock-off a legitimate publication. Maybe it is also a legitimate publication, but there is no copyright information anywhere in it that I can see. None of this detracts from the overall good quality of the print, or its utility. It really is an excellent catalog, and the first affordable variety catalog for Ming Dynasty cash that I have ever encountered. Yes, it is in Chinese throughout, but anyone who has used my Northern Song variety catalog can easily follow it.

Dà Míng Quán Pǔ includes the coins of the Ming dynasty as well as the Southern Ming (Ming pretenders, Ming rebels). As far as I can tell, there are no omissions. The rubbings are by and large identifiable. Each type is grouped by major varieties or series, and then by the variations in each series. The variety names in Chinese are not as brief as in my catalog or other similar publications, varieties often described by a sentence rather than a mere phrase. Some of the terminology is different, e.g., kuò = profile, instead of guō = inner rim, when describing the raised border around the square hole. Yet we meet many of the same descriptions as in previous catalogs.

There is no rarity guide, but almost all varieties are shown with an estimated value in yuán, which is helpful enough. Also of immense help is the inclusion of the diameter in millimeters to one tenth, and the weight in grams to one tenth. Both must be taken as averages, but using the catalog, I have found the published diameters to be consistently accurate, and the weights within 10%. To take advantage of this information, a caliper and a scale are necessary. I use a simple non-digital student caliper (not the one in the picture) and visually estimate the tenths of a millimeter, but for a scale I use a 500g Digiweigh scale, model DW-500BX, available from many sources locally or on eBay for about USD $10 + shipping. I've used my scale for over a year, and only last month had to replace the two AAA batteries for the first time.

Dà Míng Quán Pǔ numbers all the varieties sequentially, as do most other variety catalogs coming out of the PRC recently, which of course leaves no room for the introduction of new discoveries. The varieties are numbered 0001 to 3110. Nonetheless, using the variety numbers lets the student and collector organize a collection rationally. I had just reorganized my Ming collection using modified Schjöth numbers, and within months the Dà Míng Quán Pǔ became available. In the first day of working with it, I had easily reclassified my collection of 大中 Dà Zhōng and 洪武 Hóng Wǔ using its rubbings and variety descriptions. After some time I had another chance yesterday to continue and classified nearly all the rest of my Ming collection in about eight hours of steady work.

I had no great trouble finding the varieties with reasonable accuracy for the first two reigns, 大中 Dà Zhōng and 洪武 Hóng Wǔ, and for 泰昌 Tài Chāng, 天啓 Tiān Qǐ, 崇祯 Chóng Zhēn, and all the Southern Ming and Ming Rebels. However, the varieties of 永乐 Yǒng Lè, 宣德 Xuān Dé and 弘治 Hóng Zhì were too subtle and difficult for me (I lacked the patience), and so I left them, along with 嘉靖 Jiā Jìng and 万历 Wàn Lì, for another day. All I have left to finish up are the 利用 Lì Yòng, 昭武 Zhāo Wǔ, 洪化 Hóng Huà and 裕民 Yù Mín coins of the rebels, all of which are easily classified with this catalog.

I had not a few surprises, either, as I was using the catalog. For example, I knew my meagre collection of the 永历通宝 Yǒng Lì Tōng Bǎo in seal script, orthodox and cursive writing (probably cast at Nagasaki and issued by 永历 Yǒng Lì supporter Koxinga, 鄭成功 Zhèng Chénggōng, king of 东宁王国 Dōngníng Wángguó) was very difficult to assemble, all from pieces found in old missionary collections in the States. But I was astonished that their values were listed in a range from 300 to 3000元 yuán! The catalog also gave me a better idea of the relative values of the 'Proclamation' coins of the 永历 Yǒng Lì emperor, of which I have managed to find only five out of the dozen. Míng is valued at a mere 30元 yuán, whereas another in my collection, Liú, is valued at no less than 450元 yuán. The other three fell in at 150元 yuán apiece. No wonder, then, that these others come up for sale in the West so infrequently and at so high a price.

As I had just finished organizing and labeling my Ming collection, I forced myself to start all over again, printing up new labels for every specimen—a labor of love?—well, maybe. It's just that I like to keep my collections well-referenced for the day when I won't be around to tell people what they are.

My final recommendation for 大明泉谱 Dà Míng Quán Pǔ
If you're serious about Míng Get it!

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

大明泉谱 Dà Míng Quán Pǔ

Today I received a copy of the catalog 大明泉谱 Dà Míng Quán Pǔ from an eBay Chinese coin dealer with whom I have had successful dealings in the past. This catalog is a well organized variety catalog of the cash coins of the Ming Dynasty, including the coins of the Southern Ming loyalists, and the Rebels at the close of the dynasty.

Anyone who has used my Northern Song Dynasty Cash Variety Catalog would have no trouble navigating around the 大明泉谱 Dà Míng Quán Pǔ. Though the text is Chinese, if you have used my catalog and become familiar with basic Chinese coin terms, it will be easy to use this catalog as well.

Incidentally, I recommend the Penpower Chinese Expert (Pen Scanner version) as a quick way of getting not only translation but also pinyin romanisation of Chinese coin catalogs. This product is excellent, and their customer service (phone assistance getting it to work the way you want it, if you’re having a problem) is also ‘over the top.’

The edition of the Dà Míng Quán Pǔ which I bought here is certainly going to be a useful addition to my collection of Chinese cash references, and I can’t wait to use it in further classifying and understanding my collection of Ming era cash. I do have a problem with it, however, and that is, it is not an original edition, but probably a hacked version. It appears to be a high-quality photographic copy of the original book (probably scanned to JPG or PDF and then reassembled and published in a sturdy soft binding). This is evident from the occasional missing text of some of the notes at the bottom edges of a few pages, where the text exceeded either the edge limits of the scanner or the printer that reproduced the pages, and a line of Chinese text is simply missing its lower half.

I found that authentic copies of this book are available on the web, and they have a hard binding with an illustrated cover. Here is a source of the authentic edition. The cover on my copy is as the images show, a plain red cover with a faint photocopy image of the four characters that constitute the title of the catalog, 大明泉谱. It’s probably because the book is a cheap knock-off that the eBay vendor does not give the actual title, but calls it ‘Chinese Ming dynasty cash coins collect Book.’ The dealer is not being dishonest, but until the book arrived and I could inspect and research it, I didn’t understand what the description meant: ‘this book is private print, not public publication.’ Now I understand, it means, the book is an unauthorized copy. No matter, except for the occasional cut off note text on a few pages, the overall quality, even for being a copy, is excellent.

I just noticed that this dealer has also listed another cash catalog copy, this one for the cash coins of the Qing dynasty reigns Kang Xi, Yong Zheng, and Qian Long. This is apparently a Japanese work, as the text, I notice, is in Japanese. Having just discovered it, I don’t know what the original edition is called, or if it is even available.

By the way, this dealer also sells an excellent Kai Yuan variety catalog, and a copy version of the excellent catalog 北宋铜钱 Bei Song Tong Qian, which is also available in a hard bound original here. This last catalog is by far the best I have seen and is a worthy acquisition for anyone who is serious about collecting and studying Northern Song dynasty cash.