Tucked away in a corner of the King of Hobbies (coin collecting), a small band of collectors specialize in medieval and ancient coins, mostly from West and Middle East civilizations, but some from the Far East. Melissa's piece qualifies as one which would appeal to the small band of collectors.

Because there is not much collector demand, prices on these rare and interesting pieces are not as high as one might suspect. I can barely venture a guess at the value of Melissa's bone (or shell) coin from China, but it is probably less than $100 US dollars. The fact that she indicated 'little or no wear' is heartening. The pieces in the picture show the general state of preservation of such items, and if Melissa's specimen is in better shape, it may fetch better than my $100 estimate.

Two web sites that specialize in such coinage and artifacts are Guy Clark's Ancient Art and eBay's Xin-Long-Gallery maintained by cncoin99. You can see representative values for such pieces at both of these fine web sites.