Politics and government can be a difficult concept to grasp. Strategy, war, give and take, etc. That is the bare minimum of an understanding of it. However, when it comes to the politics of a different country, it can be even more difficult to wrap your head around it. A lot of times, coins and currency have a stake in such nuanced history, and that is the case for this next entry following along with Whitman Publishing’s 100 Greatest Modern World Coins publication. A top five pick, authors Charles Morgan and Hubert Walker help us understand the historical importance of this country’s volatile politics during coin production.
#3 – China 1910 Yunnan Spring Silver Dollar
The Yunnan Spring dollar is not only rare, but what authors Morgan and Walker call “enigmatic.” Struck during the turbulent years of the reign of Pu Yi or the Xuantong Emperor, its creation stemmed from the possible isolation that the Province of Yunnan felt during 1910. Yunnan is a southern province that borders Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam to the south, Sichuan to the north, and the provinces of Guizhou and Guangxi to the east. This area was isolated, but after the overthrown of the Qing dynasty in 1912, the matters that took place during the Warlord Era (1916-1928) and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), the province of Yunnan became greatly important.
On April 15, 1910, the Qing government issued new monetary reforms that looked to standardize silver coinage. All silver coin production was to take place at the Tientsin Mint except for those provinces that were too isolated for the restrictions to be enforced. Yunnan was one of those exceptions and was considered a branch of the Tientsin Mint. These secondary mints, or branches, were not allowed to strike silver until they could strike the coins according to the standard weight, fineness, design, and size. Yunnan knew this, but chose to strike the coins anyways, avoiding the new reforms and specifying a date of “Spring” directly on the coin. “Spring” is understood to mean the first three months of the year.
The 1910 Yunnan Spring Silver Dollar is quite possibly the only Chinese coin to include the season with which it was struck, according to Morgan and Walker. It also depicts another form of traditional Chinese dating in the form of the date representing the Chinese “stem-branch” calendar. “Geng” is one of the 10 heavenly stems and “Xu” is one of the 12 early branches (also corresponds to the Year of the Dog in the Chinese zodiac). Combining the two offers the capability to identify every unique year in a 60-year cycle.
The design itself features the characters referring to Chinese ingots of gold or silver knows as sycee. Sycee, or yuanbao, were used in everyone Chinese commerce until the very end of the Qing dynasty in the early part of the 20th century. They were made in various shapes and sizes and were an important form of currency made with silver form Spanish mines in the Americans. Also seen on the design was the Chinese dragon, a symbol of wisdom and imperial power.
There are only two known examples of the Spring dollar. The finer of the two was offered for sale by Heritage Auctions in September of 2011. It sold for US$546,250.