China Chihli Pei Yang Arsenal Dollar Year 23 (Fakes are possible) 1897

Okay Roland, hold on now. The coin in our picture sold at auction for, are you ready? $7170 US dollars. (Thanks to Stack's Bowers for use of their coin image.)

These coins are very rare. They were minted in the Chinese province of Chihli (also spelled 'Zhili'), which had existed since medieval China until parts of it were assigned to bordering provinces in 1928, and the remaining portion was renamed the Hebei province. Pei Yang indicates the mint and is sometimes referred to as the Pei Yang Arsenal mint in Tientsin (Tianjin). These coins, due to their rarity and value, are very often counterfeited. There is a terrific page on these magnificent coins over at DragonDollar. Be sure to look.

Our primary picture at the top of the page shows a genuine coin, and our secondary picture at the bottom shows a counterfeit coin. Genuine coins are worth thousands of dollars, while fakes are worth zero. There are also fakes with 'twenty second' and 'twenty fourth' years.

A museum-quality replica in beautiful condition might sell at a couple dollars to a keen collector. Sometimes a coin is so rare that, if you want to be able to hold it in your hand and admire it, you have to resort to a modern replica. There is a small collector following of these. However, shoddily produced Chinese fakes are heavily shunned in the community.

Such counterfeits will normally be sand cast, and show countless tiny pits in the fields, as well as granulation around small details such as in the nooks and crannies of letters. This is caused when the sand used is not fine enough, so that some detail is lost to single larger grains of sand. These copies are worth zero.

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