Mother coin
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Mother coins (), alternatively known as ''seed coins'' or ''matrix coins'', were coins used during the early stages of the
casting Casting is a manufacturing process in which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. The solidified part is also known as a ''casting'', which is ejected ...
process to produce
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
,
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
,
Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...
, Ryukyuan, and Vietnamese cash coins. As cash coins were produced using
sand casting Sand casting, also known as sand molded casting, is a metal casting process characterized by using sand as the mold material. The term "sand casting" can also refer to an object produced via the sand casting process. Sand castings are produced i ...
mother coins were first produced to form the basis for all subsequent cash coins to be released into circulation. Under the
Han dynasty The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...
in
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
mints started producing cash coins using bronze master moulds to solve inconsistencies in circulating coins, this only worked partially and by the sixth century mother coins were introduced to solve these inconsistencies almost completely. The Japanese adopted the usage of mother coins in the 600s and they were used to manufacture cast Japanese coins until the
Meiji period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...
. The mother coin was initially prepared by engraving a pattern with the legend of the cash coin which had to be manufactured. In the manufacturing process mother coins were used to impress the design in moulds which were made from easily worked metals such as
tin Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal. Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...
and these moulds were then placed in a rectangular frame made from pear wood filled with fine wet sand, possibly mixed with clay, and enhanced with either
charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, cal ...
or
coal dust Coal dust is a fine powdered form of which is created by the crushing, grinding, or pulverizing of coal. Because of the brittle nature of coal, coal dust can be created during mining, transportation, or by mechanically handling coal. It is a form o ...
to allow for the molten metal to smoothly flow through, this frame would act as a layer that separates the two parts of the coin moulds. The mother coin was recovered by the people who cast the coins and was placed on top of the second frame and the aforementioned process was repeated until fifteen layers of moulds had formed based on this single mother coin. After cooling down a "coin tree" (錢樹) or long metallic stick with the freshly minted cash coins attached in the shape of "branches" would be extracted from the mould and these coins could be broken off and if necessary had their square holes chiseled clean, after this the coins were placed on a long metal rod to simultaneously remove the rough edges for hundreds of coins and then these cash coins could be strung together and enter circulation. The '' Sangpyeong Tongbo'' (常平通寶) cash coins were known as ''
yeopjeon A ''yeopjeon'' (Hangul: 엽전; Hanja: 葉錢; "leaf coin") was a Korean brass coin with a square cut out which was first issued in 1678 and continued until the final years of the Chosun Dynasty. New history of Korea - Page 516 Hyŏn-hŭi Yi, S ...
'' (葉錢, "leaf coins") because of the way that cash coins resembled leaves on a branch when they were being cast in the mould. The introduction and subsequent usage of mother coins in the casting process proved to be paramount in controlling the quality of the cash coins. Only minor differences between mother coins remained, as the carver was very skilled. If mother coins had even the slightest error than this error would be visible on every cash coin that would be produced from it, which is why mother coins with any imperfections were quickly withdrawn from the production process before impacting many coins meant for circulation. Due to the high quality control mother coins with deformities are almost never found.


Wax mother coins

Under the Sui and Tang dynasties mother coins reached their definite form and were produced in moulds engraved by ancestor coins, however during this same period a casting technique called "the lost wax method" was used to cast for example
Kaiyuan Tongbao The Kaiyuan Tongbao (), sometimes romanised as ''Kai Yuan Tong Bao'' or using the archaic Wade-Giles spelling ''K'ai Yuan T'ung Pao'', was a Tang dynasty cash coin that was produced from 621 under the reign of Emperor Gaozu and remained in prod ...
cash coins, in this method mother coins made from wax rather than metal were used, these mother coins were produced in large quantities because they were very cheap to make, unlike metal mother coins these wax mother coins stayed in the clay moulds and when the mould heated up they would melt away leaving a cavity for the molten metal to pour into forming the coins. This technique was also used for casting other bronze items however it was only used for casting coinage during the Sui and Tang dynasties and its sudden discontinuation pointed out to the fact that it was probably inefficient for mass-producing small items such as coins.


Ancestor coins

Ancestor coins () also known as ''engraved mother coins'' () were introduced around 1730 in middle of the eighteenth century to improve the quality control of mother coins, these ancestor coins were used to cast more mother coins and from a single ancestor thousands of mother coins could be cast. The production process of making mother coins with ancestor coins was the same as it was for the casting of circulation coins from mother coins, however these coins were usually only produced for a new reign title, when preparing to cast new cash coins with new inscriptions for a recently ascended emperor, a mint would first engrave an ancestor coin out of fine brass which would form the basis for mother coins. The introduction of ancestor coins under the
Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...
Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
lead to all mints having more consistently produced coinages and smaller variations between the coins produced by separate mints in both inscription (or legend) as well as in quality.


Rare specimens

* On November 30, 2014, a Qixiang Tongbao (祺祥重寶) engraved mother coin was sold at an auction in the city of
Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
for $129,843 (which at the time was worth 808,500 yuan).


Iutsushi

Iutsushi (
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
: 鋳写し) is a Japanese term that could be translated as "to cast a copy from", this refers to a technique where regular circulating cash coins were used as mother coins, this was a very common practice in Japan until the seventeenth century and mostly Chinese cash coins from the
Song A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetitio ...
and Ming dynasties were used. Outside of Japan this technique was also largely used to produce
counterfeit currency Counterfeit money is currency produced without the legal sanction of a state or government, usually in a deliberate attempt to imitate that currency and so as to deceive its recipient. Producing or using counterfeit money is a form of fraud or ...
by illegal Chinese and private Vietnamese mints, as the cash coins produced by using the Iutsushi technique were less crisp than their mother coins, often have smooth reverses, and the fact that these coins shrunk after metal had cooled down, Iutsushi coins are also diminutive in size compared to the original circulating coins and the inscriptions are also inferior in quality as they display more softer and quite blurry. For these reasons the cash coins produced using this technique were among the cash coins known as '' Bitasen'' (鐚銭) or ''bad metal coins'' in Japan. Due to Iutsushi, it is often very hard to distinguish Japanese Bitasen from Chinese counterfeit cash coins as well as privately produced cash coins from Vietnam as many of these used the same inscriptions; it is not uncommon for there to be large variations in both the quality and metal content of original coins that have been heavily circulated.Touyou kosen zuroku (Anasendou 1977) (in
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
).


References

{{Vietnamese currency and coinage Coins of ancient China Casting (manufacturing) Chinese numismatics Cash coins