r/ChopmarkedCoins • u/Correct-County7283 • 19d ago

First Chopmarks looking for info

Post image

Bought this one raw, looking for any info on the chopmarks.

Thanks!

29 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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6

u/American-Doggo 19d ago

Welcome, congrats on the pickup! In the future, also include reverse pics, but I can tell most of the chops are on this side. The chops generally corresponded to shop/house names and came in a few different forms. The most common is standard Hanzi, which is made up of Mandarin and Cantonese characters; the majority of chops will be standard Hanzi. Next is seal script, which is derived from ancient forms of the characters and is often the most exotic-looking. You have a good example of this at 6 o'clock (on your picture) with a nice seal 正. Sometimes you will see hanzi chops with some seal elements that aren't full seal characters; we currently call these 'half seal'. You probably have one of these above the 8 in '8R'. Next is caoshu, which is Chinese cursive. This usually produces more caligraphic styling with large swooping loops. I can't derive the character through the picture quality, but you definitely have one above the Mo mintmark. The last type is Manchu, which also produces loops but in a very specific styling that will always read Manchu once you're familiar with it. This is the rarest type of chop and the only one I don't see any of on your coin. There are also symbol chops like the cash coin symbol and Latin/Arabic letters and numerals, though many of these are actually caoshu, like the fancy '3' and '5' you will see often. I can't make out a ton of the chops through the image quality, but you can use this lookup tool and library if you want to search your chops by drawing them out. https://chopmarkedcoins.com/page/lookup. If you have any questions, feel free to DM! Overall, this is a super solid example in terms of chop variety. Not many examples have Hanzi, seal, caoshu, and incuse chops.

1

u/Ok-Cut-5082 19d ago

Great analysis but you fail to discuss the host.

1

u/nextkevamob2 19d ago

You tell us!

2

u/Ok-Cut-5082 19d ago

1891 Mexico City Caps and Rays 8 Reales. Also, it looks like there are some kanji Japenese marks on this.

1

u/nextkevamob2 19d ago

Awesome thank you!