CoinQuest believes that Chinese coins will soon explode into the coin collecting market and push prices sky high for genuine, ancient pieces. Working against our anticipation is the tremendous flood of Chinese counterfeits and modern replicas made to look old.

Sooner or later coin dealers in China will figure out that 'honesty is the best policy' and that real money can be made through legitimate trading of genuine Chinese collectible coins. Until then, shysters will continue to exploit the lack of knowledge of Western customers who can be easily fooled into buying fake antiques at exhorbitant prices. They have been doing it for centuries, but it will become more difficult to maintain the charade as world economics continues its expansion.

Things are looking up. Researching Jordan's inquiry on the Internet shows various sellers who are coming clean on these exotic and interesting coins which commemorate a Taoist legend of eight immortal men and women who wield great power for good.

Although they look old, these are modern commemorative coins. As such, like all modern commemoratives, they carry value of the precious metal they cointain. Usually you see the Eight Immortals in Tibetan Silver, which is a non-precious mixture of copper, tin, nickel, and sometimes lead and arsenic. These coins are worth only a few US dollars for their collector appeal.

These coins are not very valuable, but they make interesting collectibles. We recommend that you not handle them extensively because they may contain hazardous material (lead and arsenic).

You can see an offering of eight coins, one coin for each Immortal, at the Lucky Fengshui web site.