User:Donald Trung/Letters to Scott Semans/Chinese coins and Chinese cash coins

Files 📁 Wikimedia Commons has thanks to Scott Semans.

.zip request (15 D. 08 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

Do you also have this page:

https://coincoin.com/disCC.htm

As a .zip file? It seems too tedious for me to download them one-by-one and then upload them, as these don’t contain any additional information I plan on placing them in a single category together (save the duplicates).

Yours faithfully,
Trung Quoc Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 12:34, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Reply: 4 e-mails (17 D. 08 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott,

Here are my (what generalised) replies to your four e-mails,

E-mails #1 & #2:

Thank you, thank you very much. I will probably add them all in an “unorganised folder” where people can access them for educational purposes and use them as resources, but it’s best to have them and not need them than need them and not have them. As for Chinese cash coins… the list is enormous although I greatly overestimated the number of pre-Tang Dynasty cash coins so I will probably be done very soon (especially since I’m just copying what David Hartill added to Wikipedia years ago and then fill in the rest from his book before I will go in my “additional research phase”) and then I can systematically import the “missing” ones from your website first before I will add the rest (varieties are VERY important… if you’re writing about detailed articles such as the “Kaiyuan Tongbao” English Wikipedia article where most variants of the Kaiyuan Tongbao cash coins are listed, but as I am writing per period per inscription superficially “one is enough”), the Northern Song Dynasty is one of the most overrepresented Chinese Dynasties as not only whole libraries are dedicated to just this half-period of a Dynasty, but basically every website that even just superficially covers cash coins extensively lists Northern Song Dynasty cash coins so many have already been imported to the point that I have to make separate categories for literally EVERY Northern Song Dynasty inscription I find. The Qing Dynasty (The Manchu(rian) Empire) is the only Dynasty that tops the Northern Song Dynasty. It is coinage cast either locally or by rebels that is harder to attain, the Arabic cash coins of Sultan Ghazi Rashidin Khoja or those cast by the Gangsters, hooligans, and other criminal organisations and enterprises who leached off of the Taiping rebellion are as good as unrepresented anywhere online (in fact I only know a German website run by a couple of doctors who share romantic tourist pictures of each other and Chinese recipes in German as well as Chinese postcards from circa 1910 that have an extensive list of Chinese cash coins and amulets that include the Arabic variants and some rare rebels).

Your website doesn't list cast Qing Dynasty and Taiping Heavenly Kingdom variants, only 1 (one) “mainstream” Qing Dynasty inscription is missing but no good representations of “Shengbao” (Holy Treasure) can be found on Wikimedia Commons. That would probably be the range that I am most interested in (China, cast from 1644). Republican cash coins are also underrepresented, but if I had a manner to communicate with Lars Bo Christensen and he would accept to donate I would probably complete most of the list.

By the way, several of your images of machine-struck Qing Dynasty era coins have found their way to Mandarin Chinese Wikipedia, though there they write articles about every individual mint. Even a year ago the English Wikipedia basically only had the article David Hartill donated about cash coins, now I’m already writing about Chinese cash coins by inscription so as time progresses the information will expand.

E-mail #3:

Yes, I knew that you had the “Huoping Xinbao” cash coin as well, in fact I already imported it, the thing is that you don’t list an inscription for it and nowhere do I seem to find the inscription, I could “guess” but then I would risk creating a hoax and hoaxes on the English Wikipedia get copied elsewhere, as this will be the first comprehensive list of Chinese cash coins by inscription on the internet (that I could find and actually includes rebel coinages) it will probably be used by a lot of collectors worldwide, any error I make will be on my part and cash coins of doubtful origin such as this one will be the “make or break” part of this list as anyone can find “the commonㄞinscriptions” online, but I actually couldn't find anything about Guizhou local issues outside of Taiwanese websites. Of course Taiwanese websites will be the resources I will use to actually complete the list as Hartill admittedly said that he deliberately left the really rare and obscure Chinese cash coins out of his book, but those can be added later. When I made the full list of official and semi-official Vietnamese cash coins it required a lot of research but the Japanese, Korean, and Ryukyuan cash coin lists were relatively short and easy to complete.

P.S. (Post-Script) what did you call these cash coins when you listed them on your website? The whole “Huoping Tongbao” inscription comes from Jean-Michel Moullec.

E-mail #4:

Well, I think that I’ll finish the list and import lots of other pictures before I’ll bother you with asking for specific .zip’s.

Some other notes:

I kind of have the impression as if I just wasted 3 (three) to 4 (four) months of writing time with Chinese charms and amulets while I could’ve spent that time writing about cash coins and importing Chinese banknotes. In the process I’ve imported 100% of both Gary Ashkenazy's Primaltrek and John Ferguson's Sportstune.com simply to “back them up” while I personally hate superstition and one of recurring annoyances about collecting Chinese cash coins is that people assume that they’re either “Chinese lucky coins”, “Chinese Feng Shui coins”, and/or “Chinese magic coins”, this mistake is made by both white people and Asians (and Vietnamese cash coins are almost always seen as “Chinese auspicious coins” by literally every Chinese shop owner I’ve asked about), now I’m not saying that I “wasted those months writing about nothing” as I extensively mapped all categories and symbols of Chinese charms and amulets while I wrote five (5) new Wikipedia articles about specific types of Chinese charms and amulets like open-work charms and lock charms as well as there symbolism, my main hopes with writing them is giving the readers a full “journey through Chinese culture”™ and showing how Chinese culture evolved from the Han Dynasty until the modern era and how everyone from the lowest slums and villages to the highest echelons of society viewed life… although I’ve stopped writing about Chinese charms and amulets as I’ve been able to “complete” it on the English Wikipedia leaving only offline sources, the thing remains that I started writing about them (1) to fully back up/mirror Gary Ashkenazy's Primaltrek before that content is lost forever and (2) help readers understand the important differences between Chinese cash coins and Chinese charms & amulets. However I've created such extensive writing on it that it now overshadows Chinese cash coins, but as literally every European language website I know that writes about Chinese cash coins also writes very extensively about Chinese charms and amulets (except for Lars Bo Christensen whose website is literally the only example I could name that doesn’t waste time with Feng Shui bullsh#t, and Chinese charms, Chinese amulets, and Chinese talismans and actually focuses on Chinese cash coins). So obviously the people who collect Chinese cash coins in a general sense also collect Chinese charms and amulets, this probably also means that the people interested in Chinese cash coins are more interested in Chinese symbolism on them and Chinese charms and amulets than the actual monetary and political history of China. Personally I think that I’m a member of a very small minority of people actually interested in them “beyond Feng Shui”. Anyhow David Hartill told me that there are over 5000 Chinese charms and amulets which is a number comparable to the variants of Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins which number over 5000 (according to the North-Korean government) and Chinese banknotes produced between 1912 and 1949 which also number over 5000 (according to the Shanghai Encyclopedia). Now on Wikimedia Commons I’ve managed to upload around 10% of all variants and varieties (Zeno.ru has roughly 45-50% of all variants) but I’m honestly more interested in documenting Chinese banknotes from before 1949. In fact the only reason why I haven’t bought the Shanghai Encyclopedia from you to scan and upload the images (which are in the public domain as they’re 2D objects) is because of a past experience trying to purchase a book from the United States of America and getting no refund. Don’t get me wrong I’m actually interested in buying from you after I’m done with all the imports as I realised that now that I’ve imported most information from the internet.

Of course one book I would really love to own is Dr. R. Allan Barker’s Cash coins of Viet Nam but I’ll probably ship it to my cousin in the States and collect them the next time I’ll visit him. By the way, as I mentioned the over 5000 varieties and variants of the Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins, do you have any of those? Or do you only sell Chinese and Vietnamese cash coins? As you can see on the English Wikipedia I’ve listed all the mint marks of this coin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_mun#Mint_marks

(on the Dutch Wikipedia I’ve actually listed a lot more than only the mint marks.)

And yes currently there aren’t that many Sangpyeong Tongbo mint marks on Wikimedia Commons, the South-Korean government has some online but less than 5 (five) different Sangpyeong Tongbo mint marks, Wikimedia Korea wants to work with the Bank of Korea (South-Korea) to bring many variants online but so far they haven’t expressed much interest. Have you ever traded in Korean cash coins?

Yours faithfully,
Trung Quoc Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱.

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:33, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

For historical reference purposes the "Korean mun" article looked like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Korean_mun&oldid=852568648#Mint_marks

When I references it to Scott Semans from Scott Semans World Coins (CoinCoin.com).

RE: Reply: 4 e-mails (25 D. 08 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott,

Thank you for Lars Bo’s contact details, I'll try to contact him again, in case anyone sounds interested in what I’m doing you're also free to share my contact details. ;-)

I've heard about Anasen Nyumon (穴銭入門), François Thierry often remarks about how those interested in Vietnamese cash coins should read the French and Japanese books, well until Dr. R. Allan Barker... But yeah, with unofficial cash coins French and Japanese works are still #1, my only issue with this is that like Barker these works aren’t always that easily to order online and even when I lived in Hanoi were obscure books to find unless you know who to contact... But that’s why I want to put everything on the internet freely available in the first place, so for people interested in my (Vietnamese) culture and history.

My mistake, it was “Huoping Xinbao”, because I’ve written about so many cash coins with the inscription “Tongbao” my phablet just autocorrects to it. However it has become apparent that it’s not my only obstacle, apparently I’ve missed 2 East-Turkestani variant inscriptions (Guangxu Dingwei and Guangxu Wushen) which I have to go back and integrate (I work anti-chronological starting from the Republic of China going up to the Zhou Dynasty. I’m still doing all the 3 Zhu and 4 Zhu cash coins that Hartill did in his book but is one of the few pre-Southern Song Dynasty series he didn't completely add to Wikipedia giving me the tedious job of doing every of these obscure inscriptions from what MIGHT be the Southern and Northern Dynasties period, and while we're on the subject of the S&N Dynasties... Apparently David Hartill grouped all Wu Zhu cash coins into a single chapter and only listed there differences without regard for period, ruler, and/or Dynasty and while I originally didn't want to write an “Wu Zhu” Wikipedia article I’m basically forced to as I’m now at an area where Wu Zhu cash coins have been cast for 700 (seven-hundred) years and I’m now at an area where many dynasties manufactured Wu Zhu cash coins and as the list will mostly include inscriptions without going into too much details about the variants and differentiating features I would be doing the readers a disservice to only add “Wu Zhu” and not explain why this Chen Dynasty Wu Zhu is different from this Sui Dynasty Wu Zhu and Han Dynasty Wu Zhu or even foreign Wu Zhu from the Kingdom of Kucha/Qiuci. Then I even wanted to split a “Kucha coinage” article but as I couldn’t find that many sources decided to leave it into the “Wu Zhu” article (one of my characteristics is that out of principle “I don’t write stubs”). The “Wu Zhu” article is not like the planned “Hongwu Tongbao” article that I simply wanted to create as “a long-term concept” for others to base off and because my wife bought one for me for my birthday and I found it fun to list all mint marks online and tell its story.

I’m also adding information about Chinese charms and amulets with the same inscriptions to the individual Chinese cash coins articles, this could either have two effects, the readers will more strongly associate real cash coins with Chinese charms and amulets or the readers will be able to tell which ones are “fakes and fantasies” (charms and amulets) and which ones are real, though I might have both effects on the readers. I’ve personally also grown to appreciate Chinese charms and amulets as “beautiful objects”, even so that tell the story of the history, culture, country, language(s), and people of China.

Concerning collectors, in Vietnam I’ve never seen people who collect both cash coins and charms, in fact most people know that cash coins were actually currency (often called “Xu” in modern Vietnam, but that can refer to any coin or coin-shaped object in our language, something that always greatly annoyed me). “The US public knows square-hole cast cash as feng shui coins, as you note, or as parts of jewelry or textiles. I have sold far more in my career to manufacturers than to collectors.” And they’ll be right too, in Feng Shui literally every cash coin by every variant and every inscription have unique properties, while one would allegedly (the placebo effect) work against headaches others against menstruation cramps, others against accidents, others “to keep the wealth in the house”, others to give birth to a baby boy, Etc. I would actually love to write two “shadow articles” to the list of Chinese cash Coins by inscription articles about each inscription in Feng Shui, fortune-telling, Traditional Chinese medicine, Etc. But I honestly don’t want to spend my money on the books to research that.

Regarding American servicemen, I know that Howard A. Daniel, III started collecting Vietnamese coinage that way.

Concerning Korean cash coins, yeah, but there hasn’t really been a move to bring that online other than Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek and even there less than a thousand variants are discussed with less than a hundred shown, Japanese cash coins are really the opposite, there’s so much online that I barely have to venture anywhere for it, it'll come at me even when I’m not looking for it. On the Japanese Wikipedia it’s already so advanced that even extremely obscure local cash coins you never heard of have huge articles filled with metallurgical analyses and detailed historiographic descriptions. I think that Japan, like Vietnam is a country where the people just see cash coins as “a historical currency” and collectors want them for the historical and cultural value and not because their Yoga-loving aunt told them that “it’s good Feng Shui”.

There are only two coinage traditions in the world “Asian coinage” (invented in the Kingdom of Lydia, popularised by the Persians and Greeks and globalised by the Hispanics) and “Chinese coinage” (Cash coins), only the former is extend to it and it’s characterised by having nationalistic and cultural symbols on one side and in case of a monarchy their face on the other and the denomination somewhere. Cash coins were always made for stringing and although holed coins still circulate today no cash coins are being produced, the Lydian tradition completely replaced the Chinese one since 1945.

More on the list:

Hartill essentially left 3 (three) major gaps in his “Cast Chinese Coins”, the first are the Wu Zhu cash coins, though visually represented the information is often omitted and he directs people to other works, the second are the variants of Northern Song Dynasty cash coins (Gorny actually covered this one very well, but all inscriptions are listed so this one doesn’t bother me), and the third one being Qing Dynasty cash coins (for which David Hartill’s own “Qing cash” remains the definitive work).

I kind of work on the list with one major rule and that’s the same rule I applied to the list of symbolism on Chinese charms and amulets and that is “Is the information already on Wikipedia? If “yes” then link to the appropriate article, and if “no” then add it with as much detail as possible” which is why the list contains a lot of information about the mobsters, and gangsters, and traffickers as well as VERY minor rebels from David Hartill’s Cast Chinese Coins while also explaining all their minor differences and the origin thereof while essentially “glancing over” major dynasties, this is my design as the “Liao dynasty coinage” article already explains the monetary history of the Khitans in detail and a link would suffice. Further David Hartill also essentially glances over “the Tatar dynasties” (a misnomer used by Western historians as (1) the Tatars never had any dynasty, and (2) the people of those dynasties were various peoples with varying degrees of relation to the real, actual Tatars. This is also why I avoid using that misleading term like the plague), he does list all of their cash coins but in several cases includes barely any information. Of course very few non-specialised works even make any mention of these Northern (foreign) Dynasties.

Of course the list basically serves as a reference point for inscriptions by period and is basically a superficial “Hartill online” (based on the 2005 version of his book so I’ll miss whatever he added in his reprint) with minor additions from various sources only of the most obscure and rare coins most collectors will never see in their lives. In fact for a lot of these Coins it will simply be “an online debut” because of how obscure they are, this mostly includes the Mongol Empire before the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty and the 19th century rebels of the Qing Dynasty. Do you by the way have any of those bash coins, I am actually considering writing an article about the currency of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom if I could find enough sources. On your website you state that you would create a page for that but that has never come into fruition, did you already make the scans?

Don.

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱.

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱.

P.S. (Post-Script): I bought a great deal of Chinese banknotes and silver Chinese coins back in the days before eBay was so filled with scammers and counterfeiters that even most common Chinese cash Coins are overpriced fakes, many of the items I purchased I could sell for manyfold in value simply because they was before the online cataloguing and price guides, rarity indexes, Etc. As for “You have certainly taken on a lot if you are working on Chinese banknotes as well - I just don't deal in banknotes. In the early 1970s there seemed to be two fields related to coinage which were poised to take off in popularity, with just a few dealers specializing in them: banknotes, and "primitive" money. The latter seemed far more interesting to me, while paper seemed so insubstantial that I thought coin collectors would never get into it seriously, and stamp collectors were not moving in that direction. Well, I still like the ethnographic better, but it wasn't the best decision for making money - all banknotes were incredibly cheap then, and Chinese sold for a few cents each with nobody bothering to sort them.”, yeah the Chinese numismatic market has changed incredibly over the years. Personally I see it like this “banknotes are better at depicting Chinese history and Chinese culture (even more so than Chinese charms, amulets, and talismans), but Chinese cash Coins ARE that history and culture (up to a certain point)”, what I like about Chinese cash Coins is that most are essentially worthless and extremely common to the point that you’ll find 2000 year old Coins ad nauseum for prices that wouldn’t even buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks, the opposite is true for banknotes because many are extremely expensive yet very recent. Although banknotes and stamps are very similar, stamps have a very specific function and become “worthless” to some if used and NEED to have glue in order to work, although I like receiving stamps for free from friends and literally save every stamp I receive in the mail, even if it’s a part of the envelope ✉ I would never seriously collect them because I like it when things have “a monetary value” (such as tokens) and I like it especially if they theoretically never expire and/or can be used ambiguously… well, as a weird metaphor “I want to be able to use them if I had a time-machine and went back to when they were circulating”, I do like “stampnotes” (banknotes with stamps on them) and “coinnotes” (banknotes with Coins on them).

I also aren’t planning on writing about Chinese banknotes on Wikipedia, just importing and cataloguing them on Wikimedia Commons, I don’t think that I can write much about a banknote issued by a small local butcher in a very remote village during the Manchu Qing Dynasty. The majority of these banknotes were issued by “regular Zhou’s” so to speak, and in many cases those banknotes are the only proof we have of their existence. Wikimedia Commons is a great place for them, maybe in the future someone else will write about them… probably on Mandarin-Chinese Wikipedia.

P.P.S. (Post-Post-Script): There is no hurry to send me any pictures yet, the “Wu Zhu” Wikipedia article isn’t just some “minor distraction”, it's a very major one, Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek has so much information on them that my drafts crash literally 9 (nine) out of 10 (ten) times I try to do anything with them, THEN I have to import all the information from Robert Kokotailo’s Calgary Coin and Antique Gallery, and THEN from David Hartill’s Cast Chinese Coins. I’ve been deliberately avoiding Wu Zhu cash Coins for a reason but now I have to, it’s the only last major series in Chinese numismatics I ignored (mostly in favour of Chinese charms, amulets, and talismans) and now I’m paying for it. Wu Zhu cash Coins are simply the biggest theme in Chinese cash Coins and will have to be properly mapped before I can link to them, even the part about Wu Zhu charms has two sections and Wu Zhu cash Coins are kind of the reason why Chinese charms, amulets, and talismans exist in the first place. Mapping all the VERY SUBTLE differences will take time and doing additional research too, however if I don’t write this article the readers will simply not know the significance of each Wu Zhu cash coin in the list. I never seriously collected Wu Zhu cash Coins variants and this will mostly be new to me so I can see it from the perspective of most readers and will add sufficient details to make sure that these Chinese cash Coins don’t remain a mystery. The readers should be able to have a full appreciation of Chinese cash Coins (and the coin-amulets based on them/inspired my them) without leaving anything out.

Are there Wu Zhu cash Coins not listed on your website that are rare and have Images of? Unlike with most inscriptions visual representations of Wu Zhu cash Coins are needed because without them it’ll simply be a lot of text about subtleties but nothing to inform readers how these actually look.

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:44, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

The Hongwu Tongbao and Republican cash coins (27 D. 08 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

I just launched the Hongwu Tongbao cash coins Wikipedia article, which you can find here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongwu_Tongbao

For some reason I seem to have overestimated the amount of Images you have of these Hongwu Tongbao cash coins on your website (as I remembered there being a long list but didn't bother to check if you illustrated them). If you already have the scans I’d love to add them to this article.

Also this is basically my “model article”, this is how I want articles about individual cash coins to look like, it’s basically a model for others to follow, it lists all mint marks and explores what Chinese charms, amulets, and talismans with the same inscription symbolise, why and when they were cast, and explores Japanese cash coins based on it. It tells the story of the inscription and what followed. I hope that after I retire that others will adopt this model for writing more articles about Chinese cash coins by inscription.

That aside and going a few hundred years in the future of this, Wikimedia Commons currently doesn't have much images of cash coins cast in the Republic of China in 1912, the 1 wén Minguo Tongbao (民國通寶) from Dongchuan, Yunnan is the only one at the moment. If possible I’d like to receive a .zip file of all images of Republican cash coins you have.

Yours faithfully,
Don.

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 18:25, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

RE. The Hongwu Tongbao and Republican cash coins (29 D. 08 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

Thank you very much, and I have no intent on sharing your website’s database Microsoft Excel file, however it is handy for pre-Qing cash coins. As for the Hongwu Tongbao cash coins, I actually still have to sort them out. It’s odd how you and Gary Ashkenazy (Primaltrek) seem to have polar opposite conclusions regarding Hongwu Tongbao charms. I actually like sorting Chinese charms, amulets, and talismans by Nien Hao and from what I’ve seen the Zhouyuan Tongbao and Zhengde Tongbao Nien Hao’s are the most popular.

Concerning catalogue numbers on Wikipedia… that is actually already a thing, Wikipedia has a rule that many experienced editors misinterpret called “Wikipedia is not a catalogue” however that rule actually states “Wikipedia is not a catalogue unless you have independent sources that aren’t from the people who made the items”, obviously any catalogue not published by the Chinese government before 1912 would suffice… but I personally don’t like adding catalogue numbers, why? It’s a lot more tedious than you would think. One can argue that David Hartill produced all the definitive works (and he did) but a couple of decades from now someone else could supersede him, plus he already superseded Frederick Schjøth, Fisher’s Ding, David Jen, Etc. And actually I mostly work importing from David Hartill so it would make sense and he cross references himself (although 9/10 webshops now mostly rely on David Hartill).

Do you see that box with information on the top right of the article? Well there you can easily add all catalogue numbers, I’ve worked with this system while writing about Japanese cash coinage. It’s just that personally I prefer adding all the variants organically and informatively and my main goal is so collectors don’t have to look for information offline, not to encourage it (unless it's to freely add that information online), also numismatically orientated Wikipedians mostly prefer Krause, the information in Krause although undoubtedly valuable is minimal beyond pictures, with enough time and effort Wikimedia Commons can do that. I’m not opposed to adding catalogue numbers, but I personally don’t simply don’t own many of the somewhat older catalogues so I would just be telling half a story if I would add them.

Also I’m a member of the Numista community and there we do add catalogue numbers, but beyond basic metal compositions, years of production, and denominations there isn’t much information there. Like Wikipedia Numista has user-generated elements but it isn’t as easily edited as Wikipedia (usually) is. On Wikipedia there is the potential to add more, but the issue is that most information is offline.

Also with the Wu Zhu article I’m just done with the Chen Dynasty, there are so many versions of the Wu Zhu cash coins that they will spin your head off of your body and into the sky and then crashlands right into Mao Zedong’s MAOsoleum. David Hartill donated his list to Wikipedia years ago but Gary Ashkenazy (Primaltrek) has a list of variants so long that it’ll take me more time than I'd like, but as the Wu Zhu is the only pre-Tang Dynasty cash coin I’ll write a separate article for I prefer to take some time and complete it well into the details than rush with it to finish off that list so I don’t have to visit it later to add any missing Wu Zhu cash coins that have been attributed to a period and link to that section into the “Wu Zhu” Wikipedia article.

I never really liked Wu Zhu cash coins, but I literally always buy them because they’re usually as cheap as the dirt they were dug out of and are super old so I can brag to my friends how cheap the ancient cash coin I show them really is, and I do honestly like the characters especially since the “Wu” (5) looks like an hour glass.

As for those Fujian Tongbao cash coins, I can see why you placed them under “Modern China”, Lars Bo has all the Republican cash coin variants including the trial strikes, but I’m not going to list the trial cash coins in the list article as I've already listed them in another article and they were never issued.

Also is that Jianwen Tongbao (建文通寶) cash coin a charm or a fantasy? I can’t seem to find much about it.

Don.

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:10, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

RE. RE. The Hongwu Tongbao and Republican cash coins (30 D. 08 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

Regarding variants of the Ban Liang, Wu Zhu, and Kaiyuan Tongbao cash coins… well, that’s only logical since these series all lasted quite long, the same goes for the Japanese Kan’ei Tsuuhou and Korean Sangpyeong Tongbo, they were produced over a long period of time, and excuse me for saying this and coming off as uneducated… but I have seriously never heard of Roger Doo before. ”I have trained my eye mainly on the Northern Song and Qing varieties, and more recently on the struck 10 Cash varieties, but I have written off the conservative series as too great a challenge.” Yeah, me too, I basically imported most content on the Ban Liang article from Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek and rarely give it a second look, I wrote it for the readers interested in it and had fun learning about the different Ban Liang cash coins and their history. The general rule with all of these “conservative series” is that the variants are so subtle that even a trained eye wouldn't spot them without lots of research, in fact the surface usually only scratches the surface as metallurgical analyses tell a lot more than anything visual about the cash coins. And the Wu Zhu article has proven to be such a great amount of work that in my procrastination I’ve started procrastinating my procrastination with more procrastination… I’m writing an article about the coinage of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom now. However as there is such a large interest in Ban Liang, Wu Zhu, and Kaiyuan Tongbao cash coins it’s quite easy to find references about them (even online). “Assigning catalog numbers is indeed tedious, and not a proper job at your level of approach, but for the researcher or collector it forces attention to detail in order to classify exactly, and thus promotes discovery of new varieties, potentially creating a greater understanding of the historical and minting details - as in matching die pairs.” Indeed, I am mostly looking to tell the origin story and explain all the basic varieties from an encyclopedic standpoint, I’d welcome anyone who wishes to expand on it and I started by building and expanding what was already there, only later did I start building things from the ground up but the story of the why and how of the coinage in context of Chinese history was always the most important, I always left the minor details to Wikimedia Commons. “Burger's $800 Qing work with all the huge fold-out charts was motivated by a desire to reach conclusions on the Chinese economy during this period, the exact classification of coded changes in the calligraphy being a means to this end.” That sounds very interesting. “I have trained my eye mainly on the Northern Song and Qing varieties, and more recently on the struck 10 Cash varieties, but I have written off the conservative series as too great a challenge.” I personally mostly trained on Qing Dynasty coinage and only recently have taken up the machine struck cash coins for identification mostly using your images as a reference point. But I’ll come back to these subjects later after I’ve launched the Wikipedia “Wu Zhu” article, I find literally every reason to distract me from this goal and without it I can’t properly make a list of Chinese cash coins by inscription for pre-Tang Dynasty and post-Qing dynasty cash coins.

Regarding using Wikipedia with catalogue numbers and numismatic references, well I’ve had mixed experiences with this, now let me first account some experiences I had on the Dutch language Wikipedia with this, I wrote around 8 or so articles about the monetary history of China from the Xin Dynasty until the Qing Dynasty, none of those articles are up now because someone who campaigned against me and stalks my every edit to literally remove any numismatic references got them removed because in his words “all numismatic references are unreliable” even though most articles were written using non-numismatic sources with only the list of coins and some figures about the economy being sourced with numismatic references, apparently if one user makes an unsubstantiated claim that “numismatic references are unreliable” this gets accepted as law simply because they have more friends on Wikipedia (if someone who is “trusted” wants to create a rule that goes against everything Wikipedia stands for all they need to do is gather their friends and often very little resistance is met). Thankfully I didn't have any such absurd experiences on the English language Wikipedia or the Vietnamese language Wikipedia (I wrote about numismatic subjects there a couple of years ago), but as almost all readers from all over the world basically only (or mostly) read the English language Wikipedia and I don’t have as much free time I chose to focus my non-Wikimedia Commons activity mostly to the English language version, even in private conversation with a curator from a Dutch museum they called the Dutch language Wikipedia as “basically irrelevant”, thankfully the English language Wikipedia has a large numismatic-orientated group of users, not as large as I’d want (to receive more help) but large enough for there to be a regular expansion and creation of numismatic subjects, although this still largely excludes cash coins, but things like Krause and catalogue numbers are already integrated. If catalogue numbers are to be added or the coverage better improved then this will have to be driven from an external force, I’ve attempted to get people from Numista to donate images of coins to Wikimedia Commons which didn't get a wide response while people post pictures of rare coins and never before seen (GENUINE) variants to coin fora every day, but as many of them close those images are lost forever.

There has to be a large external effort by a numismatic website and/or club to bring their members to Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia to add more images, write articles, create more categories, add more older books that are in the public domain (including scanning them), Etc. And yes, as this is something of educational value this is fully within scope and as Wikidata is being added to Wikimedia Commons adding catalogue numbers will be possible for every individual image, and as what you state “Assigning catalog numbers is indeed tedious, and not a proper job at your level of approach, but for the researcher or collector it forces attention to detail in order to classify exactly, and thus promotes discovery of new varieties, potentially creating a greater understanding of the historical and minting details - as in matching die pairs. Burger's $800 Qing work with all the huge fold-out charts was motivated by a desire to reach conclusions on the Chinese economy during this period, the exact classification of coded changes in the calligraphy being a means to this end.” is of very high educational value and fully within the scope of Wikimedia Commons, the problem here comes with the fact that while everyone is building their own websites, very few are trying to bring all information to one place (see my paragraph on Zeno.ru below), the reason I started writing about cash coins at Wikipedia was because I remember there being dozens of websites about cash coins half a decade ago that are now completely gone and only give a “404” message if you go to them, I attempted to bring 100% of Dr. Luke Shepherd Roberts’ website, Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek, Vladimir Belyaev’s Charm.ru, and several other websites into Wikimedia and am 100% successful (text-wise), one website “Travel with Linh (Vietnamese in Vancouver)”, a Vietnamese language website that I extensively used doesn't host any cash coin-related pages now so if I started even a little bit later we wouldn't have as much information about Vietnamese cash coins on Wikimedia projects. In fact bringing all these websites into Wikimedia (temporarily) cost me my American and Japanese comic books hobby as I barely have the time for them now, but anyhow as I’ve seen a large quantity of website disappear over the years I decided to put everything in one place, now Wikimedia is the #1 website about Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Ryukyuan, and Vietnamese cash Coins, charms, amulets, and talismans. Unless you’re including Images…

Which brings us to Zeno.ru, Zeno.ru like Wikimedia is user content generated, well as you said “I don't understand exactly what is going on now, as they have stopped signing up new contributors - apparently too much junk and possible fakes were being added - but hopefully they will again be a useful public forum to discuss unusual coins, as well as a catalog.” all I could say is possibly, I had contact with Vladimir Belyaev but quite some time, then I requested to a Zeno-account a few months ago (I think my username was “Guang Xu Tong Bao” or something), and when he asked me what I would upload I sent this as an example:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Nguyễn_Dynasty_coinage.jpg

He said that it's something for tourists and any subsequent e-mails to Vladimir Belyaev regarding ANY subject seem to go unreplied, especially since I wanted to have a few Images of somewhat rather rare Vietnamese cash coins from Charm.ru uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

But more specifically on Zeno.ru now per “I hope something can be worked out between Zeno and this Wikipedia project one day.”, well as it’s user-generated every individual user owns the copyright (this is also how Wikimedia works, I own the copyright © of every edit I’ve ever made and of my own images I uploaded, this is valid until 70 (seventy) years after my death, and the same applies to the 1000+ images of your creation I uploaded to Wikimedia Commons), but the difference here isn't in copyright but in the licensing of that copyright and in some cases with Zeno.ru the lack thereof as for example Bruce Griffith told me that most of his Trấn Dynasty images are from Dr. R. Allan Barker which would mean that without permission from Dr. R. Allan Barker himself they would not be permitted on Wikimedia Commons for at least 70 (seventy) years after his death or something similar (Dr. R. Allan Barker is I think Singaporean so different copyright rules would exist). Zeno.ru also has a copyright statement that no content (text or images) may be copied and/or used so even if you would post your images to Zeno.ru no outsider may use them for illustration in a catalogue, the opposite is true for both your website and Wikimedia Commons.

And for this reason both communities aren’t 100% compatible even if the numismatically-orientated Wikimedians and Zeno.ru would work together, for example Craig Greenbaum posts lots of books in the public domain from his personal (private) cloud storage folders from Box to Zeno.ru, if they’re his own scans he adds “Copyright © Craig Greenbaum, all rights reserved – for personal ONLY” on every page TWICE, now these reference works are already in the public domain so legally no-one could claim copyright © but both Craig Greenbaum and Google do this (on every page!!!), so it’s clear that many people aren’t all that excited for others to make a profit off of their work, and although John Ferguson and Dr. Luke S. Roberts didn't have these objections plenty of others have.

Bert Lijnema is the only person from Zeno.ru I’ve convinced to (let me) upload their images to Wikimedia Commons, he lives near me and I’m writing this e-mail in a city next to his, but as we live so far from China we actually live far away from where most of the research is being conducted and he recognises this and sees what a great tool the internet is. I believe that for a truly usable online library filled with resources for numismatists to be available it should be commercially usable, I know for example that Bruce Griffith is very bitter towards François Thierry because he denied Dr. R. Allan Barker the usage of some images to write the next definitive work in government-produced Vietnamese cash coins and this “island mentality” will isolate researchers. Every image on Wikimedia Commons could be used in any book for any purpose, the next definitive catalogues should benefit from the internet and more effort should be made to bring more books online (especially those in the public domain). But for the coming time my goal of “only needing Wikimedia + Zeno.ru for information on cash coins” shall remain unchanged, I could make Wikimedia the #1 website for historical banknotes on the internet.

Quoting myself “Also is that Jianwen Tongbao (建文通寶) cash coin a charm or a fantasy? I can’t seem to find much about it.”, I am actually referring to this cash coin:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Jianwen_Tongbao_%28%E5%BB%BA%E6%96%87%E9%80%9A%E5%AF%B6%29_-_Scott_Semans_01.jpg

And finally concerning “I can see a character on a coin, but if I do not know the name in weijo or pinyin, or know the sound, or have some idea of the meaning, then I have no way to look it up, and even so, many of the translation websites are oriented to modern characters and the ones found on coins are lacking.” I personally use a Bopomofo (BoPoMoFo) keyboard on my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL phablet, it’s a keyboard by Microsoft that comes bundled with every Microsoft Windows device, it’s probably under “Taiwanese – Zhuyin” or “Taiwanese – Fuhao” (as the Mandarin-Chinese word for the Bopomofo character set is “Zhuyin Fuhao”), if Mandarin-Chinese is written with the Traditional Chinese script it's often called “Taiwanese” because the democratic Chinese government resides in Taibei. I also almost exclusively research using “.tw” websites and am not as proficient in Simplified Chinese characters (though a lot more than I'd like), in Hanoi I actually got a degree in Classical Chinese but since the teachers chauvinistically swear by the Latin script we rarely (if ever) used Chinese characters, I later took up the study of Chu Nom as a hobby and can now easily navigate older Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese texts with ease because of all the Chinese loanwords. Character input is easy once you understand the rhythm of Traditional Chinese characters, for example “ㄍ -> 國光廣姑高工貴個公“ are the Traditional Chinese characters I mostly use that sound like “G{e}”, if I type “ㄊ” it automatically suggests “通寶”, Bopomofo is to Traditional Chinese what Kana is to Japan, in fact all you need is a Chinese character (Kanji) and know its sound. If I on the other hand don’t know its sound I use the (English language) Wiktionary, another Wikimedia project that lists a very large number of Chinese characters with their pronunciation is almost every Chinese language (Mandarin, Yuè, Wu, Southern-Min (Hokkien, Teochew, Hainanese, Etc.), Eastern-Min, Putian-Min, Gan, Jin, Etc.), Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, for example if I want to search a character I see on a cash coin but I don’t know its tone (let’s say it's “Pù” but David Hartill only writes “Pu”), then I have to dissect the character and look for its components and find the radical, then count (or guess) the number of strokes other than that radical, as a really easy let’s use “銖” (ㄓ in Bopomofo), I know the radical “釒” which indicates that this concerns something metal and/or metallic. I then search for the radical “釒” like this:

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%87%92

And then count the number of strokes, I then end up here:

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Index:Chinese_radical/%E9%87%91

Congratulations, I found a character. That’s why it's quite tedious to make that list of Chinese cash coins by inscription (which will thankfully for you include all Traditional Chinese inscriptions), all these tools are quite handy. As I speak Vietnamese I can also use the Nôm-Hán conversion tool by Nôm Preservation Foundation from the United States of America.

Best,
Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:28, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

RE. RE. RE. The Hongwu Tongbao and Republican cash coins (29 D. 08 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

Regarding cash coin and collecting Vs. Cash coins and selling, well I’ve been collecting for decades now and I’ve sold several rare varieties a decade ago as I bought genuine high value cash coins cheap on eBay even longer ago from family members of deceased collectors or clueless Westerners, both have now been eclipsed by a bottomless pit of fakes, forgeries, and fantasies coming out of an ever growing army of Chinese counterfeiters continuing a tradition of imitating cash coins that are as old as cash coins themselves. I did make a nice buck then but I’m more interested in documenting them now, at the time I still lived in Australia and found finding information about cash coins a huge pain in the neck, like John Ferguson before me I am now attempting at cataloguing them all online for the benefit of others so they won't have to look for books far away… I know, the free knowledge here would be in direct competition with your business but currently I don’t think that there’s really enough to challenge a (newer) catalogue… yet.

Also regarding Vladimir Belyaev dismissing me I actually only wanted to upload it because of this post:

https://www.zeno.ru/showphoto.php?photo=110709

Which contains a lot of non-Vietnamese cash coins and being overall of bad quality while my scan is of superior quality, has one of every common Vietnamese issue, and has an educational value but as you state “The other issue is that their focus has apparently shifted to cataloguing and away from discussing. At your stage of life and involvement in this hobby, I suppose you have a lot of questions, and can begin to answer some posted by others, but their goal is rather to get photos of rare or unusual coins which their expert moderators can classify, so they will favor older, richer guys who own these pieces. I think another peeve is collectors who simply want to contact contributors to buy rare items from the photos, and themselves contribute no information.” However I actually did just mostly want to contact members to help with Wikimedia Commons and so far everyone I’ve come into contact with has been very receptive and helpful. I think that this largely seems like a repeat of Charm.ru, it started as a website where experts from all over the world could share and discuss Chinese and other Oriental numismatic objects but later concerned itself more with cataloguing (NOT NECISSARILY A BAD THING), as for you adding Chinese characters or not… it's not necessary unless you want more Google, Microsoft Bing, Ecosia, Etc. hits, otherwise most people that already know of your shop can simply check per period and then look for their desired specimens, plus most of your costumers are from the United States of America, right?

“This is the focus issue that defeats many who try to make a living from coins: starting out as collectors they spend too much time learning about and describing items instead of giving the minimum information necessary to sell the item.” I actually don't categorise my collection at all, I know everything from memory, but I’ve seen what happened to collectors like me after we die, our children sell high value coins with junk in bulk for bottom prices because they can’t be bothered with researching themselves, I don’t remove price tags 99% of the time for this reason, but I probably should start adding values... (I’m in my 40’s and have lost some of my childhood friends to cancer and motorcycle accidents, I always plan for after my death, the kind of altruism inherent in most people, though not all...)

“You say it is tedious to make the list of Chinese coins by inscription - is that something that exists, or you are working on it?” I literally talk about it in every e-mail, I’m almost done with the Taiping coinage article (probably today) and have that whole list to work on. In fact after importing all current websites that cover cash coins and charms this was my #1 task, in 2013 David Hartill donated half of his definitive book “Cast Chinese Coins” to the English language Wikipedia (which he incorrectly called “in the public domain” as he still kind of retains some sort of copyright but that’s a molehill I don't want to kick right now), for years that article (entitled “Ancient Chinese coinage”) and this article remained the internet’s #1 information page regarding Chinese cash coins until Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek, do you know what half of David Hartill’s Cast Chinese Coins sums up to? Well, half of David Hartill’s Cast Chinese Coins so in 2017 I “filled the gaps” by adding articles about the Mongol Yuan Dynasty coinage, Tangut Western Xia Dynasty coinage, Khitan Liao Dynasty coinage, Southern Song Dynasty coinage, Jurchen Jin Dynasty coinage, and of course the Manchu Qing Dynasty’s coinage. These are all general overviews and although they go into some detail I largely omitted rebel coinages (which I only later added to the Yuan), then a few most ago I imported literally EVERYTHING I hadn't before from Gary Ashkenazy's Primaltrek and the result is the “Chinese numismatic charm” article which I consider the “charm cognate” of David Hartill's “Ancient Chinese coinage” article as in that it gives a basic introduction and goes into a fine amount of detail superseding everything online before it but only being accompanied by some rather “minimal Wikipedia articles” (think “Knife money”, “Spade money”, “Ban Liang”, and “Zhou Dynasty coinage”), just for reference sake the “Ban Liang” article before I expanded it in 2017 looked like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ban_Liang&oldid=744011557

But after all these creations I was basically done with what I would like to call “the overview series”, this is the state Chinese numismatic charms on Wikipedia are in now, but Chinese cash coins can now have a full list of all cash coins by inscription where 75% of my work was already done and I can link to either these overviews or even articles about individual cash coins like “Hongwu Tongbao” and “Yongle Tongbao”... But that’s also where I want to retire, I have a basic Wikimedia to-do list and want to retire after that, the list will be very helpful to collectors with limited resources, I have built upon both David Hartill and Gary Ashkenazy ( גארי אשכנזי) and have placed Chinese charms in a position better than Chinese cast coinages were in 2015, and the only thing further would be to write articles about individual cash coins by inscription (a stage where the Mandarin-Chinese Wikipedia is at now, and one that the Japanese Wikipedia has largely completed). Just look at all online catalogues before I wrote those things on Wikipedia.

Robert Kokotailo’s Calgary Coin & Antique Gallery is a great source, but is it complete? Most certainly not, and some of the “will have an image soon” sections have been waiting for an image for over 10 years. Gary Ashkenazy's Primaltrek is the whole reason why I started writing about both Korean and Chinese cash coins (just for comparison, the Korean cash coin (“Korean Mun”) article still only has one page, and although it's a pretty neat overview is basically on par with the best from the web information-wise, not better and certainly invites readers to “go offline” for more information, it’s not comparable to rest of my work and I blame the lack of online resources other than Gary Ashkenazy's Primaltrek for it), now my main issue is that he uses Simplified Chinese characters in his “main-Primaltrek” site where the bulk of his content resides (while does correctly use Traditional Chinese characters on his “blog-Primaltrek” website), the list of Chinese cash coins though more complete than anything currently else is mostly just a collection of links to how he talks about related charms (or “Yansheng Coins”) and though it actually does address several extremely rare cash coins David Hartill missed, it also skims over the Liao, Western Xia, Jurchen Jin, and Yuan dynasties and lists not a single Manchu mint mark for the Qing Dynasty. Then there’s John Ferguson who still uses Wade-Giles, and basically just “brought Schjøth online” and nothing else, but when the website was first done it actually was the best European language website about Chinese cash coins, no comparison could be offered, but now it simply hasn't aged well and it shows, but I’m still extremely happy that I’ve been able to import the entire website to Wikimedia Commons not just to preserve everything, but also because it greatly helped with the categorisation of so many numismatic subjects including Northern Song Dynasty variants. Lastly there’s Numista with its incorrectly titled “A reference list of 5000 years of Chinese coinage” (“Numisdoc › Numismatic encyclopedia - Written on December 9, 2012 • Last edit: June 13, 2013 • Comments”), which you can find here:

https://en.numista.com/numisdoc/a-reference-list-of-5000-years-of-chinese-coinage-97.html

It’s basically why I started writing about the Southern Song Dynasty’s coinage because David Hartill inexplicably ended the “Ancient Chinese coinage” Wikipedia article in the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty. Now Numista is quite interesting as it gives a good overview of all the major government’s issues, it makes a few errors here and there (such as the Guangxu Yuanbao cash coins or the post-1912 cash coins) and omits pre-Tang Dynasty varieties as well as rebel coinages, Liao, Western Xia, Jurchen Jin, and Yuan Dynasty coinages, Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and mafia issues, as well as non-Manchu mint marks from the Qing Dynasty. I had to literally combine all of the aforementioned online catalogues with Wikipedia to get a good overview and still was mostly dependent on David Hartill's Cast Chinese Coins.

By the way, you could use the Numista list to get the inscription from almost all major cash coins, though I’ll be launching a way better overview (with images, for starters) in September 2018.

Best,
Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:30, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Taiping Heavenly Kingdom cash coins (30 D. 08 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

I just launched the article about the cash coins and paper money of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, it’s not much but I didn't work on it as much:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shengbao&redlink=1

And as you can see there currently are no images of Taiping Rebellion cash coins on Wikimedia Commons so I actually had to use a Vault Protector Coin as an illustration.

Best,
Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:37, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

My take on the Wu Zhu (03 D. 09 M. 2018 A.)

"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Zhu

I created this article solely for linking to in the upcoming list article (I just finished the Qin Dynasty, now only the Zhou), what do you think of it?

By the way, do you have any images of a San Zhu I can upload to Wikimedia Commons? Surprisingly there is none on Wikimedia Commons today.

Best,
Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 18:52, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

The list of Chinese cash coins by inscription is now available (04 D. 09 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

I just launched the list of Chinese cash coins by inscription on Wikipedia and you can find it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_cash_coins_by_inscription

As you can see there are quite a large amount images already on Wikimedia Commons, however some areas such as the Mongols and various rebels (including the Taiping Rebellion) are completely missing. Concerning information about the list itself I’ve already asked several expert Wikipedians (including David Hartill, who is also a contributor to the English Wikipedia) to review and if necessary correct it. The information is 75% David Hartill’s Cast Chinese Coins, 10% Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek.com, 5% Ulrich Theobald’s ChinaKnowledge.de, and 10% “other” (mostly various Taiwanese newssites, Taiwanese collectors’ databases, and various other sources).

As you can see the list superficially mostly covers inscriptions and links to more detailed articles such as the “Qing Dynasty coinage” article, the “Ancient Chinese coinage” article, Etc. Some Wikipedia articles such as “Shengbao (currency)” about the “holy coinage” of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and “Wu Zhu” were specifically written for this list so collectors can click on them to read more about background information and variants (as many Chinese charms, amulets, and talismans there are... Half of that number exist in Wu Zhu variants alone, Hartill doesn’t attribute them per dynasty so I had to use Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek.com for that, exampli gratia that te Chen Dynasty, Liang Dynasty, Etc. Produced Wu Zhu cash coins and then link to their variants.), a few articles about “individual cash coins” such as “Yongle Tongbao” and “Hongwu Tongbao” already exist with “Kaiyuan Tongbao” being the first I wrote from scratch. My intent is now that I’ve covered all the “large coinages” that more articles about these individual cash coins will “fill in whatever blanks are left” and list all variants.

Additionally, I added to the list more information about cash coins that weren’t covered on Wikipedia before such as the “other rebels of the Qing Dynasty” such as those of Li Wenmao.

Concerning removing things from your scans/photographs, I have multiple reasons why I usually don’t do that. First of all if an image says “600%” or “500%” or “400%”, Etc. Then this is actually very important to numismatists (researchers) and collectors alike as it indicates the (actual) size of the numismatic object, if anyone wishes to remove it then they can do it as your copyright © license allows for anyone to change your work, but the people who post your images to Zeno.ru by first removing this information are doing their readers a disservice, not a service. And second of all you catalogue all of your images by the numbers, often I don’t have the free time to copy the accompanying texts 1 (one) by 1 (one), so when I import them I usually do it “per series” and then the descriptions cover multiple related images, this invites the readers to both appreciate the differences and understand which numismatic object is illustrated. By the way, you’re already the #2 donor of images of coins to Wikimedia Commons, #1 is an auction company specialised in Roman and Ancient Greek coins, #3 is Sema’s Art-Hanoi.com which mainly specialises in Vietnamese and French Indo-Chinese coins (but due to copyright © reasons I only imported pre-1968 images to Wikimedia Commons), the latter of which were also imported by me.

Do you have much of the missing cash coins? I will still import the rest of the images from your website, now I will finally have more time to focus on that and I’ll start with your Vietnamese cash coins, maybe I’ll even do Danish and Dutch India before I do the Song Dynasty :-P, Vladimir Belyaev has some of the more rarer varieties such as the “Köl bilgä Tängri Boquq Uiğur qağan - Il tutmiš yarliğinga” from the Uyghur Khaganate.

Any suggestions? Did I miss anything?

Best,
Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:07, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

RE. The list of Chinese cash coins by inscription is now available (05 D. 09 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

Yes, you've sent me your database, and I already have all of your machine-struck Chinese coins with two .zip files ready to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons once I’ll find the time for it. As for requesting a series I’ll import all of your online images first but there are some series I’d like to get to.

As for Primaltrek, it’s funny because every time someone asked Gary Ashkenazy for additional information about Chinese cash coins he always responded to people with “ask Scott Semans or Bob Reis as they are the experts in the field”, knowing that you’ve bookmarked that page is a true honour, that’s in fact a very common reaction I’ve been getting. Apparently I missed a whole dynasty…

As I asked people for advice regarding Taiping Heavenly Kingdom paper money and someone send me a link to a website about the entire monetary history of Chinese paper money and their relation to cash coins, that was when I realised that there was “too much information to not be on Wikipedia” so I started writing the “Da Ming Baochao” article about Ming Dynasty era banknotes, in that PDF I found a weird image, so apparently an illustration of a Western Liao Dynasty (Kara-Khitan Khanate) banknote was attached and the odd thing is that it was denominated in “strings of cash coins” (Guàn), but I thought “The Kara-Khitay Khanate didn't issue cash coins right?” well, apparently very recently in Kyrgyzstan 3 (three) specimens of a Kara-Khitan cash coin were found, famous Western numismatist and owner of Zeno.ru Vladimir Belyaev actually wrote a whole academic paper on them alongside Zeno.ru forum moderators Vladimir Nastich and Sergey Sidorovich. So sometime this week you’ll see a whole new Chinese Dynasty appear on that list, but as only 3 (three) specimens are known to exist in Kyrgyzstan don’t expect to see them at any auction in the United States of America anytime soon. :-P

Well, I would like to receive your scans of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom cash coins, do by any chance also have the Arabic cash coins of Rashidin Khan Khoja? Apparently despite their short mintage they’re quite common, however they're not represented on Wikimedia Commons, yet.

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 21:12, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

RE. RE. The list of Chinese cash coins by inscription is now available (06 D. 09 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

My name is “Trung Quoc Don”, I tend to write it at the bottom of most letters I write (or simply “Don”), although you're a busy man so I can understand that you'd focus more on the content of what I write than the person (something most Wikimedians can learn from you :-P), thanks in advance for adding me to that mailing list.

As for the Manchu mint marks, the text renders as horizontal regardless of where you copy it from, in fact as computers are extremely Latinocentric most non-Latin scripts will be rendered in a manner similar to Latin by default, I had to use some special code to make it look vertical but if you copy it, it will render horizontally. By the way I differentiated between Chinese and Manchu mint marks on Wikipedia (as the mint mark lists were originally copied from two sources, Gary Ashkenazy's Primaltrek and Numista), however Ulrich Theobald’s China Knowledge encyclopedia has this list:

http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Terms/money-qing-pul.html

These will also render horizontally and Ulrich Theobald doesn't use “Boo” (ᠪᠣᠣ, copied from Wikipedia, still renders like this) too often. As only around 80 (eighty) people still speak Manchu today I kind of understand why most computers don't render it correctly. :-P

I just checked your database again, could you send me your “Zhou round coins” and “Wang Mang” series, I think that I’ll probably start chronologically as opposed to anti-chronologically (how I worked the list).

Best,
Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 10:08, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Rebel coinages (06 D. 09 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

Just to confirm, do you have cash coins issued by the Mafia? Such as the Tianchao Tongbao (天朝通寶), Huangdi Tongbao (黃帝通寶), and/or the Yiji Jinqian (義記金錢)? I’ve actually seen the Yiji Jinqian Mafiosi issues quite a lot online, the other issues mentioned by David Hartill. Apparently they also issued a lot of variants of the Taiping Tongbao (太平通寶) and Kaiyuan Tongbao (開元通寶) because seing the difference between a government-issued cash coin, Mafioso cash coin, Vietnamese cash coin, and counterfeit cash coin isn't hard enough already.

Best,
Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 00:08, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

RE. Rebel coinages (10 D. 09 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

I meant the Shanghai Small Swords Society, the Small Swords Society, the Heaven and Earth Society (Tiandihui), and the Triad Society. I asked a prominent member of a coin forum where Gary Ashkenazy (from Primaltrek) posts under the name “Manymore” for help, due to my bad relationship with Gary Ashkenazy I thought that I’d ask his rival and apparently rich collector Goh Yu Loong (Siew Loong) and he donated several images of really rare specimens including this one that David Hartill missed in his “Cast Chinese Coins”, this is the “” which I found on several Taiwanese websites, one version includes two (2) intertwined lozenges on its reverse, while the other contains the reverse inscription ””, Loong Siew uploaded the former which you can view here:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yi_Ji_Jin_Qian.png

Also I’m a Statist so the whole “governments being gangsters” thing is not something I always agree with, but as most of the time governments have their own interest in mind I can’t disagree, but still all communities of people devolve to, you won’t believe some of the petty practices and accusations Wikimedians make up to span a narrative against a person they dislike, I’ve being accused of being paid by Gary Ashkenazy to write those articles I wrote and I wouldn’t be surprised if they would accuse me of being paid by you to upload those images. The moment people with power over you dislike they’ll abuse this, this happens with governments and this happens without governments. By the way, are you an Anarchist or are you a Liberal? Because I know that Liberals believe in the whole “invisible hand of the free market thing” however I would blame those market forces for creating the problem of counterfeit cash coins in the first place. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from talking about politics it’s that they can ruin good partnerships so I’ve decided to not be politically hostile towards anyone outside of the world of politics or if they hold heinous views such as being pro-child abuse, animal abuse, and/or human rights violations.

I will get back to you about that cash coin later and I hope for you that you will win that auction, I hate mysteries so I try to map everything but the problem with private mints is that they do not keep any records. I for a long time wanted to write about the privately produced cash coins of the Orient but they’re still not as well understood, thankfully records were kept in Japan by private mints so Bitasen and Shichuusen are understood but Vietnamese and Javanese private mints as well as those from China itself have yet to be properly mapped.

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱.

Best,
Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 09:55, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Your crude Taiping Tongbao is identified (08 D. 09 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

I asked Vladimir Belyaev for help with the list and he said that the list “looks amazing” and that it was “great” and then noted several corrections including whole series I’ve missed, several doubtful coins I should add disclaimers to, Etc. And while doing more research on Zeno.ru discovered that your “Kublai Khan era Taiping Tongbao” is actually a cash coin produced by either the Bai people or the H’mông tribes of Yunnan. There were cash coins local to the tribes of Guizhou and cash coins local to the tribes of Yunnan, apparently several Chinese reference works confirm them to be from the Hongzhi period of the Ming Dynasty. I’ve also updated the list with the Northern Liao Dynasty (doubtful), Western Liao Dynasty (Kara-Khitan Khanate), more rebels from the Northern Song Dynasty, and the Eastern Xia Dynasty (factually the “Eastern Zhen Dynasty” but Chinese historians prefer the misnomer).

Additional research is still needed, but I’ve actually expanded it a lot further now, and I’ve found a usage for that Taiping Tongbao image, also I hate the inscription “Taiping Tongbao” as it keeps being used, apparently a Northern Song Dynasty rebel also used it and he cast them in 3 (three) different denominations.

Best,
Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 22:44, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

RE. Your crude Taiping Tongbao is identified (08 D. 09 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

First of all concerning the attribution, it was in our faces all along, at Zeno.ru they’re here:

https://www.zeno.ru/showgallery.php?cat=872

(Home » FAR EAST » China » Ming 明, 1368-1644 » Dali kingdom, Yunnan casts (ex. Tribal casts), with the listed “main sources” being: Sun Zhonghui. Qianbi Jianshang ("Coins identification"), 1992, Shanghai. - Zhou Xiang. Zhongguo Zhen Xi Qianbi ("Rare and valuable Chinese coins"), vol.2, Shanghai, 1996. - Hua Guangpu. Zhongguo Guqian Mulu ("The Catalogue of Ancient Chinese Coins"). vol.2, 1998. P.990. - Hua Guangpu. Zhongguo Guqian Mulu ("The Catalogue of Ancient Chinese Coins"). vol.3, 2004. P.1017. - Hartill, David. Cast Chinese coins. 2005.)

Your Chinese friends were right that they were local casts from Dali, the period was just wrong. Jean-Michel Moullec was right! Anyhow which cash coins are and aren’t tribal casts is often controversial.

Regarding your photograph, I’m not an expert and as a numismatic book dealer you actually have more reference works so if you don’t know it I (probably) wouldn't it either. Is it Tianfeng Yuanbao?

I have always had issues with identifying Chinese cash coins, contemporary forgeries are common, charms made to look like cash coins are common, and 90% of the time they turn out to be Vietnamese. I know that it’s not a Ming Dynasty government cast because it doesn't bear a reign title, Yunnanese and Guizhounese tribal issues tend to be extremely crude while this cash coin looks... Nicely made by someone who knew what they were doing. Personally I suspect this to be an Iutsushi (鋳写し) which cash coins that were manufactured by using a circulating (normal, or regular) cash coin as “a mother coin”, the counterfeiters who made Iutsushi cash coins knew what they were doing so the cash coins always looked nicely made (unlike tribal issues that just looked bad), Iutsushi cash coins do tend to have inferior calligraphy so judging from your picture I'd guess that it’s an Iutsushi cast.

Was the pictured cash coins found in Guangdong? Because Guangdong had a HUGE Iutsushi industry but it was common all over China and again, 90% of these tend to be Vietnamese and many are Japanese, Ryukyuan, Javanese, Malayan, Balinese, and even Bornean (as in from tribal Borneo). As cash coins were scarce under Mongol rule I’d say that if it's an Iutsushi that it would probably be from the Yuan Dynasty, but these are all wild guesses. Did Buddhist monks (Talapoys) practice Iutsushi during the Yuan Dynasty?

Best,
Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:18, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

RE. Your crude Taiping Tongbao is identified (10 D. 09 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

I just saw that you sent me your Qing database, I thought that “Qing1” and “Qing2” were your machine struck coins, I didn't extract those .zip files before. Could you also forward those to the Wikimedia Commons OTRS team as you didn't publish them online before?

Could you send me all your struck coinage as a .zip file by the way? It has no hurry so take your time.

Best,
Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 11:45, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Just to be certain... (23 D. 09 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

https://coincoin.com/I019.jpg

This image is released with the same Creative Commons license as all the other images by you on your website?

Yours faithfully,
Trung Quoc Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:11, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

One of your images made the front page of the Mandarin Chinese Wikipedia (06 D. 10 M. 2018 A.)

Attachments:

• 
  📎
• 
  📎
• 
  📎
• 
  📎

"Dear Scott Semans,

One of your images made its way all the way to the front page of the Mandarin Chinese Wikipedia (which is actually banned in Mainland-China due to the Great Firewall of Mainland-China and all, but it’s the biggest online encyclopedia in Taiwan), so apparently a colleague volunteer who has done an amazing job writing about the monetary history of China and Taiwan on the Mandopedia (or “Mandowiki”, well the Mandarin Chinese Wikipedia) has had the article he authored about the round coins of the Kingdom of Qi make the front page, his online nickname is “Baomi” (Ghost Bunny) and he was basically the only contributor on Chinese cash coins on Wikimedia Commons before I stepped into the scene last year. The article covers the three (3) round coins produced in the Kingdom of Qi during the Warring States period and uses another one of your images too, you could find the article here:

https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E9%BD%90%E5%9B%BD%E5%9C%9C%E9%92%B1

(Taiwanese version).

https://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E9%BD%90%E5%9B%BD%E5%9C%9C%E9%92%B1&variant=zh-tw&oldid=51501030

(Version I used as a point of reference in case it changes significantly being on the front page and all.)

These images have barely been there a month and they’re already making millions of views. A lot of Chinese (mostly Taiwanese) kids learning about Chinese history will see your images as their introduction to Chinese cash coins, you should be proud of yourself. ;-)

Yours faithfully,
Trung Quoc Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:32, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Request (16 D. 10 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

Could you please e-mail the .zip files of the Qing Dynasty and Taiping Rebellion era cash coins to the Wikimedia Commons OTRS team (Permissions-Commons@Wikimedia.org) and then e-mail me the ticket number you received? Also if it’s not too much trouble I’d like to have the .zip file(s) of all of your machine struck (Chinese) coins.

Yours faithfully,
Trung Quoc Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:49, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

RE: Request (16 D. 10 M. 2018 A.)

Attachment 📎 = .Zip files 📁 for the Wikimedia Commons OTRS team.

"These two,

Well, alright but I would advise you to change the password of your website after I’m done, just in case my e-mail address gets hacked or something.

Using that I could probably download all .zip folders if that’s fine with you.

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:51, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Qianlong Tongbao (17 D. 10 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

Today I launched the “Qianlong Tongbao” (乾隆通寳) article, you can find it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianlong_Tongbao

I have officially used all of the sources I have at hand to the point where all of my “new content” is basically just forking (copying and pasting) old content with only slight additions, so this is officially my final (planned) Wikipedia article about Chinese cash coins. I will have more time to focus on Wikimedia Commons because of this including importing your website.

Some notes regarding the article, there are several mint marks here that are not listed at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty_coinage#Mint_marks

I also didn't find the “Boo Kuche” mint mark anywhere online which is why I didn't add the Manchu characters. I think that “the next generation of (Chinese) cash coin writers” on the English Wikipedia” can pick up where I’ve left off, all my future research shall be limited to the “List of Chinese cash coins by inscription” article. I will go through David Hartill’s Cast Chinese Coins (2005 version) in its entirety again and will occasionally check Vladimir Belyaev’s Zeno Oriental Database, I asked him for help, he helped a bit but haven't heard much of him since. I think that it’s nice to finish with the Qianlong Tongbao for a few reasons: (1) It’s my first Chinese cash coin and searching it on the English-language Wikipedia inspired me to collect cash coins after I saw the beautiful Japanese ones, so it would be appropriate for it to be my last article on the subject (I only have one article planned on the paper money of the Manchu Qing Dynasty). (2) I wanted to have at least two English-language articles on Manchu Qing Dynasty cash coins to “set an example” for others for the style (intro + history + mint marks + charms, amulets, and talismans + a link to the full list of Chinese cash coins), and finally (3) this article nicely “sets the tone” for the next generation of English-language Wikipedia authors, it showcases several prominent Manchu mint marks and is yet another article on an individual inscription. This also marks the fact that I literally cannot import any more information from online sources such as Gary Ashkenazy’s Primaltrek, Y.K. Leung’s Chinese Numismatics in Research, and Vladimir Belyaev’s Charm.ru as I’ve basically used all articles from them and took all images from John Ferguson and Dr. Luke Shepherd Roberts. And none of the aforementioned parties have as much images as you have on your website so the best way I can prepare future authors is by importing your images.

I also think that they’ll probably be utilised on the Mandarin Chinese-language Wikipedia first. By the way, do you have any contact with Y.K. Leung? I’ve been trying to contact him for quite a while but I’ve not been able to reach him. He may not have that many images on his website but he has a large number of extremely rare cash coins.

Yours faithfully,
Trung Quoc Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 13:39, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Creative Commons license and Qing Dynasty cash coins (30 D. 10 M. 2018 A.)

A screenshot I had e-mailed to Mr. Scott Semans.

"Dear Scott Semans,

First of all, do you like the way that the license template for your content on Wikimedia Commons looks like? I simply copied the license statement from your website and added it to a standard permission template. Second of all I wanted to know if you forwarded the .zip files of the Qing Dynasty cash coins you sent me to the Wikimedia Commons OTRS team? I'm currently working on https://coincoin.com/srXC.htm#20 and added several images to the list of Chinese cash coins by inscription.

For your information I re-read David Hartill’s Cast Chinese Coins and added all cash coins I overlooked, apparently many Chinese blogs write about a cash coin issued by the Kumo Xi ethnic group with the inscription “Tianfu Tongbai” or “天阜通宝 (tiān fù tōng bǎo)” however this cash coin is most likely to be inauthentic (a fantasy). I need to check Zeno.ru more for Chinese cash coins such as the Jiading cash coins found here: https://www.zeno.ru/showgallery.php?cat=14016 Listing all Japanese, Korean, and Ryukyuan cash coins on Wikipedia was easy but I can never say with all certainty “that I’ve gotten all of ‘em”. The list in its current form is probably the best representation of all the cash coins I could find both on- and offline. I’ve invited experts like Dr. Helen Wang to look at it but received no feedback so if you could ask any expert friends of yours which inscriptions are missing I would greatly appreciate it.

Yours faithfully,
Trung Quoc Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 23:47, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

How Manchu text displays (31 D. 10 M. 2018 A.)

"Dear Scott Semans,

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abkai_fulingga_han_jiha_(%E1%A0%A0%E1%A0%AA%E1%A1%B4%E1%A0%A0%E1%A1%B3_%E1%A1%B6%E1%A1%A0%E1%A0%AF%E1%A1%B3%E1%A0%A9%E1%A1%A4%E1%A0%A0_%E1%A1%A5%E1%A0%A0%E1%A0%A8_%E1%A0%B5%E1%A1%B3%E1%A1%B4%E1%A0%A0)_-_Scott_Semans.png

This is an example of Manchu text being used in one of our images.

Yours faithfully,
Trung Quoc Don

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱."

• --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 18:34, 31 October 2018 (UTC)