I have been doing some research and just cannot find enough information for what I am looking for. I'm looking at Sun Yat Sen coinage from 1936 to 1943. Here are my questions - 1) 1 fen coins dated 1938 and 1939. Mintage figures seem that they are somewhat common (12 million and 75 million respectively). Catalog value does not seem that they are rare. I have not yet to see any. Have you seen them? This is an example struck in 1937 2) Transitional period in between 1939 and 1940. It seems that there is a mix of aluminum, brass coins struck. For instance in 1940, 1 fen was struck in both aluminum and brass. 2 fen was struck in brass yet 5 fen was struck in aluminum. Why? Was it because they were struck in different provinces where some metals were more difficult to procure? I don't have an example of the 1940 1 fen in brass... 1 fen 2 fen 5 fen 3) The existence of Shi Kwan brass coins. They seem to be a very different type. According to somewhere I read, these were struck in Yunnan. Can anyone confirm this? 4) Numista reckon the portraits featured are Lin Sen. There may be more catalog that refer him. I somewhat doubt this is right as I suspect they are all of Sun Yat Sen. I'm certain he was featured in earlier coins as well as on Taiwanese coins. Thanking in advance
Found a link that may be of interest. This is written by Eduard Kann who lived in China in early 1900s and left when the Communists took over. His interests in Chinese coins led him to write very detailed information about coins from that era and it still is very very useful today. Sadly I don't think he have written anything about copper. Perhaps it would be another encyclopedia worth for copper / brass / bronze coins alone. Page 293 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015025952790;view=1up;seq=299 Before you start screaming copyright - this is an old catalog that has expired a long time ago. There are reprints available and I would highly recommend you to get it. I still cannot get my heads around the amount of information and coins that were issued back then. One of my questions is definitely answered - the portrait is definitely Sun Yat-sen. Lin Sen was the governor of National Government at that time. For US coin collectors, this may be of interest as the master dies were prepared in Philadelphia (!) and were shipped off to Shanghai. As Shanghai could not keep up with production, Austrian mint was also involved to produce additional nickel coins. Sadly as the Sino-Japanese war started, production had to be relocated more inland into different provinces. As nickel prices rose, I can only speculate that there were attempts to strike coin in brass and aluminum. This may have varied in different regional areas. I'll leave this for now - this is quite intense and I have not got around to absorbing all the information.
