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Hi again! Dear Lawrence,never mind what the seller says!!!
He wants to sell...
The coins are 100% copies/fakes. For sure,not even silver made,perhaps only silver plated. I repeat that their frosty/uncirculated appearance is clear for fakes. Not even the catalogue photos do not show such ''mint state'' specimens! But more important are the differences in design compared to genuine coins:
Please,see for yourself how many these are: different design of dragon,the name ''Kiang Nan'' is largely spaced from the next word ''Province'',etc.
I send you screenshot of the KM catalogue.
Andi
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Dear Lawrence,I come back to you with new info,because I don't want to mislead you. This don't change my personal opinion that the coins are copies and that it is safer to leave them where they are(at the seller
).
I found in the catalogue an earlier type of the Kiang Nan ''dragon dollar'' which matches,AS DESIGN,your topic coin. But its genuine weight is exactly 27g. and not 26.72g.,as you say it has! This other weight than the real one confirmes the fake. The coin is not used in circulation.
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I'm with Andi. All these coins fall into the "too good to be true" category. I hope someday China grows up as a nation. They have a large, heavily funded, government sponsored counterfeiting industry. And, because the industry is well funded, they are really good at making really good counterfeits.
Andi points out the un-natural look of the surfaces. That's correct. This is an excellent indicator of "fake" status. Check the natural look of the Kiang Nan dollar in my picture. It is genuine and it sold for $17000 US dollars during a 2022 auction. The patterns are almost identical, but the overall surface qualities are different.
For the Kwang Tung tael, you may have a modern, high-quality counterfeit which may actually carry some decent value. For an explanation, with pictures, see this page:
https://coinquest.com/cgi-bin/cq/coins.pl?coin=19524
(PS: Thanks, Andi, for your contributions to this page. Well done!)