Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Research Report on the Actual Mintage of Some Modern Chinese Gold and Silver Coins


By Rongli Culture Research Institute
 http://bbs.jibi.net/dispbbs.asp?boardid=70&id=228264&page=9&star=1

For a long time, the actual mintage of modern gold and silver coins has been reached based on a combination of market availability and data like early factory records and annuals of official mints. After the Rongli Culture Research Institute (“Rongli Institute”) was organized, China Gold Coin Incorporation provided it with strong support and valuable information, including some data on actual mintage. After further communications with China Gold Coin Incorporation, it was learned that the following considerations delayed the release of actual mintage information: first, the People’s Bank of China has strict regulations on information regarding Renminbi. The People’s Bank of China publishes bulletins on mintages when gold and silver coins are released. As a result, China Gold Coin Incorporation is required to seek approval from the People’s Bank of China before such data can be disclosed; secondly, China Gold Coin Incorporation discovered significant divergence between much of its data and those published by the mints. The Rongli Institute is publishing a small amount of actual mintage data which have been verified as accurate, to answer some long time questions from collectors. There is still a lot of data to be verified by China Gold Coin Incorporation with the mints. Hopefully, after some time, China Gold Coin Incorporation will release to all of us actual mintage numbers which are authoritative, accurate and systematic.



Name Planned Mintage Actual Mintage
1993 Yandi 5oz gold coin 99 23
1993 Song Qingling Sitting silver coin 20000 1003
1993 Sun Yat-sen 1oz gold coin① 8888 3290
1993 Definition of Zero 5oz silver coin 3000 5
1993 Guanyin gold coin set 1000 976
1993 Mao Zedong 5oz gold coin 100 103
1993 Song Qingling Standing silver coin 2000 2003
Ox Lantern gold coin (Unearthed Artifacts II) 500 475
1993 Marco Polo 5oz gold coin 99 104
1993 Marco Polo 5oz silver coin 1500 1504
1993 Panda 12oz gold coin 99 70
Stirrup gold coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries II) 1200 809
Taiji Yin Yang gold coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries II) 1200 829
Umbrella gold coin(Ancient Inventions and Discoveries II) 1200 795
Definition of Zero gold coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries II) 1200 797
Terracotta Army gold coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries II) 1200 796
1993Brown Bear 5oz silver coin 1500 1053
1993 Yin Yang (Fu, Lu, Shou) 1oz gold coin 888 745
1993 Peacock 20oz silver coin 500 585
Seismograph kilo silver coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries I) 250 56
Kite kilo silver coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries I) 250 55
Ancient Ship Building kilo silver coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries I) 250 55
Compass kilo silver coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries I) 250 55
Bronze Age Urn kilo silver coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries I) 250 55
Compass kilo gold coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries I) 10 10
Seismograph kilo gold coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries I) 10 11
Compass piedfort silver coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries I) 2500 1353
Seismograph piedfort silver coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries I) 2500 1353
Mountain Sheep gold coin 5000 2710
Wu Zetian gold coin 25000 2554
Monkey King 1/10 oz gold coin (Traditional Culture II) 16000 574
Genghis Khan 1/10 oz gold coin (Traditional Culture II) 16000 594
Acrobat 1/10 oz gold coin (Traditional Culture II) 16000 569
Zhuangzi 1/10 oz gold coin (Traditional Culture II) 16000 579
Bao He Palace 1/10 oz gold coin (Traditional Culture II) 16000 849
White Dolphin 1/2 oz gold coin 30000 1005
White Dolphin 5oz gold coin 188 102
Celebration of Spring II 5oz gold coin 128 34
1994 Unicorn kilo gold coin 18 20
Porcelain Crafting gold coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries IV) 1200 380
Gun Powder gold coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries IV) 1200 373
Wei Qi gold coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries IV) 1200 377
Block Printing gold coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries IV) 1200 375
Acupuncture gold coin (Ancient Inventions and Discoveries IV) 1200 383
Liu Bei and Kong Ming 1oz gold coin (Three Kingdoms I) 1500 996
Guan Yu and Zhang Fei 1oz gold coin (Three Kingdoms I) 1500 1004
1995 Panda 5oz gold+2oz silver 199 176
1995 Dragon Boat 5oz silver coin 1000 455
1995 Feng Zhou Sailing Ship gold coin 1000 291
1995 Cao Fang Sailing Ship gold coin 1000 293
1998 Guanyin 1/2 oz silver coin 10000 1505
1997 Panda Bi-metal set 2800 835
1997 Panda 5oz gold+2oz silver 199 54
Fa Xian’s Journey gold coin (Silk Road III) 10000 297
Qi Baishi Squirrel and Grapes 1oz silver coin 11800 3505
Qi Baishi kilo gold coin 25 12
1996 Unicorn kilo gold coin② 18 16





Notes:
   The order was probably not fully filled.
② Including two varieties: the 2000 Yuan Unicorn Head and the 150 Yuan error coin made with the silver coin die.













































































































































































































Saturday, April 26, 2014

Evidence of Official Sanctioning of the Sino-British Friendship Medal


The Sino-British Friendship Medal (popularly known in China as the "Horse Treading on Flying Swallow" medal) was issued to commemorate the Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People's Republic of China from 1973-1974 in London. For details, please follow this link: https://www.coincompendium.com/w/index.php/CCT2514.

Despite its beautiful rendering of the famous horse bronze statue, the value of the medal has been questioned because the company that issued the medal, Toye Kenning & Spencer Ltd., is not an "official" mint, like the Royal Mint. Although there are anecdotes that the Chinese took part in designing the medal, hard evidence is difficult to come by. To some collectors, it is just a privately minted medal with nothing in particular. This view is held by one of the top medal collectors in China, RAREMEDAL.

In a recent discussion of the medal on the Chinese coin collection site bqcoin.com, I had the chance to take a close look at the catalog from the Exhibition, and made an important discovery: the Chinese characters on the Sino-British Friendship Medal are the handwriting of Guo Moruo. This is evidence of official sanctioning of the medal.

Here is the medal with the Chinese characters 中华人民共和国出土文物展(Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People's Republic of Chinaand 中英友好(Sino-British Friendship), the former arranged around the rim in a clockwise fashion starting at 8 o'clock position, the latter placed horizontally at the bottom of the medal.


The characters 中华人民共和国出土文物展(Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People's Republic of Chinaalso appears on the first page of the Exhibition catalog:



The page clearly shows that the handwriting is by Guo Moruo, spelt as Kuo Mo-jo in the old fashioned spelling system.



 If we compare the handwriting on the catalog and the characters on the horse medal, people who know Chinese will have no difficulty concluding that the characters meaning "Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People's Republic of China" are from the same person, although they are not exactly identical. That means that the characters on the medal are also handwriting of Guo Moruo.

The characters 中英友好 (Sino-British Friendship) on the medal did not appear in the catalog. But judging from the character , which also appears in the inscription in the catalog, and the character , which also appears in a poem hand copied by Guo, it is clear that this phrase 中英友好 was also written by Guo Moro.

Character on the medal :


Character in the copied poem:
There are importance differences between the two inscriptions, though. On the catalog, the character is taken from Traditional Chinese, while the Simplified Chinese character is used on the medal. Also, some of the characters on the medal were written more carefully than their counterparts on the catalog. Here are two comparisons. Those taken from the medal are on the right side.


One would wonder why the designer of the medal did not take the inscription directly from the catalog and use it on the medal. One possible reason is that for a British designer, the more detailed (in the case of the Traditional Chinese character ) and more irregular characters posed some difficulty for engraving. Another possible reason would be that Guo provided two inscriptions in the first place. In any case, it is beyond dispute that Guo wrote at least two inscriptions for the Exhibition in London, one for the catalog, the other for the medal.

Now that we know Guo Moruo blessed the medal with his inscription, we can elaborate on who he was. Guo Moruo was one of the top scholars in China and held the position of President of Chinese Academy of Sciences from 1949 to 1978. Here is the wiki article about him, which is pretty sketchy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guo_Moruo. What's missing in the wiki article is an important fact that Guo was also the Vice Chairman of the National People's Congress from 1954 to 1978, which was a top government position.

There are two interesting facts that connect Guo to the horse statue and the Exhibition. He was the first person to appreciate this treasure, singling it out from a pile of provincial collections on exhibit in the northwest city of Lanzhou. He was the benefactor of the horse statue, so to speak. It was him that named the statue "Horse treading on a flying swallow", although later people argued that the flying bird was not a swallow, but a hawk.

Guo Moruo was also the initiator of the Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People's Republic of China around the world. To build on the achievements of the Ping Pong diplomacy, he brought to the Chinese State Council his proposal of Archaeological Finds diplomacy, which was approved by Premier Zhou Enlai and put into action. That led to the grand tour of the Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People's Republic of China through 14 countries/regions in a period over 5 years.

With such a close relationship to the horse statue and to the Exhibition, it is not surprising that Guo would inscribe for this medal, lending it the semi-official status.