u/American-Doggo

When By Weight, Not By Coyne said "few collectors have attempted to seriously pursue chopmarked paper currency for the chops themselves" I took this as a personal challenge. Here are a few of my pickups not coming from China. I found a Chinese seller and made a deal for a bunch of his Qing and Republic ink-chopped notes, so I will post those whenever they arrive.

Noteworthy about the notes themselves, the $5 note was printed by the American Banknote Company, a Boston printing firm founded in 1795 that printed notes for 115 countries, including numerous US privately issued notes like Civil War notes, and is still in operation today, but no longer prints banknotes. The 5 Yuan was printed by De La Rue, A British printing company headquartered in Basingstoke, England, that has printed notes for 150 countries since 1821, with 69 countries still under contract today across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Caribbean. While these notes are Chinese domestic issues, they often had to travel just as far as their Silver predecessors to reach their destination.

I'll leave it up for debate if the obverse marks are chops or graffiti; they appear to have all been left using the same 3-prong tool, though it's unusual to see this many identical chops next to each other on any date, let alone this late of a date. There is a chop on the reverse that is slightly more definitive.

Edit: Typo in the title I meant 1907. Finally got a "real" one of these for a price I'm happy with, it being a singular chop with great placement is an added bonus.

All except for the 5c with the large chop were listed with no mention of their chops. I initially didn't have much of an interest in ink chops, but the IGC slabbed 20c caught my attention with its one clear ink chop and 2 additional remnant ink chops, and the other HK 5c with the partial ink chop was dirt cheap. There is a surprising amount of stuff out there for low cost if you just dig!

Got this off an eBay seller with a bunch of overpriced chopped Yen listed for auction. With 2 days left and no bids on any of his listings, I threw down a low offer for this, and he accepted! I'd imagine this is one of the more common dates with chops for the right Gin being closer to 1897. PCGS population declines steeply before 1895, but that is probably due to there being fewer higher-grade examples worth submitting.

Finally got my first chopped 1600s coin! Whoever hacked this piece in two certainly did it with little regard for doing it evenly, as this half weighs 16.87g, meaning it would actually be just over 5 Reales. The numerous hack marks around the cut tell me that's probably not what they were going for.

Edit: Forgot to add the slabbed HK 10 Cents https://imgur.com/a/NF5x80i Both slabs are additional pickups from the Stack's Bowers Hong Kong auction. The 1870 Yen has been one of my dream pickups since I started collecting chops, so I was thrilled to grab this for a great price ($220) the day before the Murphy sale. It also features a mostly illegible multi-character chop and a chop with a shape I've never seen before. The slabbed HK 10 cents is intriguing because, according to the listing, the chops are the seal script version of Jing "京." (I also just found out a Rose HK 10 Cents had an identical chop https://www.reddit.com/r/ChopmarkedCoins/s/llIRkpZTQm) My research into seal script yielded little besides it being the ancient form of Chinese writing, so any known info on chops of this style would be appreciated. Found the HK 10 cents with the two small style chops on eBay for 8 bucks with no mention of chops, so I'll take that any day. Lastly, I found this Ink Chopped 10 Yuan in a dollar bin at the coin expo. Has anyone here attempted to put together a serious collection of ink-chopped bills?

Went to the Denver Coin Expo today, the selection of Chopmarked coins was absolutely pitiful, literally saw 5 chopped coins in total, a few UST$ a Carlos IV 8R and a torched cap and rays, all grossly overpriced. Then among a selection of various shipwreck coins, from a seller who specializes in them, some with paperwork some without, I spot this. The seller said that this coin has been in his collection for around a decade and that he had just recently pulled it out (with the age of the stickers on the flip I believe him). He also claimed he picked this up in Jacksonville, and that it was from a shipwreck somewhere in that region, but he is unsure of the specific wreck. Without that information it's obviously impossible to prove. While shipwreck coins with chops are known they are rather uncommon as China was almost exclusively importing silver, so for a coin to make it from Mexico to China, pick up a chopmark, then make it back is exceptional, but not unheard of. The coin doesn't have any extreme salt water damage like is sometimes common but it does have the deep black color that you often see with silver coins from salt water. Either way I got it for a bargain ($200, the price sticker also looks old lol) so I'm happy.

Picked up a pair of late Chinese Republic minors from my local coin store. The Kwangtung has one tiny obverse chop and another possible test mark on the reverse and the Yunnan has a few tiny test punches on the reverse. Edit: Didn't realize the Yunnan is Copper Nickel, so I assume the marks are just damage.

Edit: I forgot the 1907 Sinkiang 5 Mace, updated version here: https://imgur.com/a/GQgLwgg

While "Dragon Dollar" typically refers to the Chinese 7 Mace 2 Candereens series, I've included the other crown-sized coins from the region that feature a dragon because I feel that they, as a whole, represent a common phenomenon in Numismatics where the dominance of a trade coin causes other entities in the region to adopt the design of that coin, and that design becomes the standard.