Q. David Bowers
No.1: Collecting Business Strikes
Business strike trade dollars, minted from 1873 to 1878, comprise six Carson City issues, six San Francisco issues (seven if you include the 1875-S/CC overmint mark), and just five Philadelphia Mint coins. None is an unobtainable rarity. The most elusive coin of the group, the 1878-CC, which also happens to be the lowest mintage coin, catalogues for several hundred dollars in lower grades and in the $1,000 range for a sharply-defined, lightly worn example. While $1,000 is hardly peanuts, in today's market this amount will not daunt the serious collector.
A few coins are very rare in Mint State but relatively obtainable in circulated grades, even through AU. The prime examples in this category are 1873-CC and 1876-CC. There are some surprises in the higher Mint State levels. For example, the 1874 Philadelphia issue, a relatively common date, is a great rarity in MS-65 preservation. In September 1992, Stack's auctioned a collection of this format. It contained one each of the business strike issues in Uncirculated grade. The owner stated that it took him 20 years to complete it.
No.2: Collecting Major Varieties
Another way to collect, and perhaps the most challenging for the numismatist seeking an intellectual pursuit, is to acquire major varieties within the business strike issues of the series; such pieces as the Type I and Type II obverse and reverse variations that exist for certain dates and mintmarks. The true rarity of certain of these has not been determined, yet there are ample opportunities to buy scarce coins for "common" prices (as noted, as of 1992 the PCGS, NGC, and ANACS certification services gave no indications on their holders as to Type I and Type II varieties), and, perhaps, even to make new discoveries.
Collection No.2 can be combined with Collection No. 1 to yield a full display of business strike issues of the 1873-1878 years.
No.3: Collecting Chopmarks
The third way, a path not often traveled, is to acquire one of each different trade dollar business strike, either by dates and mints (per collecting method No.1 above) or by varieties (method No.2 above), but with each coin having a chopmark. During the original time of use in the Orient, many trade dollars were chopmarked with Chinese characters. These marks, stamped into the obverse and/or reverse of the coins, signified approval as these pieces passed from hand to hand through bankers, merchants, and others. As chopmarked pieces actually circulated in China and served their intended purpose, they are especially interesting to collect.
Years ago, some numismatists paid a premium for chopmarked coins, considering them to be especially historical and valuable. Today, the general population of numismatists does not understand chopmarks, mention of them has been virtually absent from investment-oriented commentaries (which have constituted the bulk of information in newsletters and market reports issued since about 1977). By some, such coins are wrongly considered to be "damaged"-because at one time the government called them "mutilated," in an effort to avoid redeeming them. A more enlightened view would be to consider them to be "countermarked"-coins with an added bit of history-literally two coins in one.
The Meaning of Chopmarks
Chopmarks are an integral part of the history of the trade dollar, and for that reason I take a few more paragraphs to go into the subject more deeply.' Very little original, useful information on these has appeared in print, an exception being F.M. Rose's 1987 study appropriately titled Chopmarks. Rose relates that the term chopmark is said to have been first used by the English in connection with India, where the term was chappa or choppa, meaning an official stamp or seal. From that point it was a short path to chop and chopmark.
Chopmarks, which consist of Chinese characters and/ or designs, were imprinted (with ink) or stamped with punches on the surfaces of various silver (primarily) and gold coins to indicate that the stamper considered them to be genuine and of full weight. F.M. Rose lists the following basic types of chopmarks:
1 and 2. Test marks on a coin's surface and cuts on the edges of coins. These are usually in the form of file marks or cuts which removed metal, either to expose the raw metal below or, less frequently, to provide metal for assay elsewhere. For the collector of trade dollars, a test mark on the edge of a coin is a negative situation not currently of numismatic interest.
3. Small chopmarks, often tiny symbols such as stars, crescents, circles, swastikas (an old-time emblem; not related to the later Nazi use of it), lines, etc., as well as Chinese words and pseudo characters.
4. Large chopmarks such as Chinese characters, pseudo characters, and symbols. Larger than the preceding.
5. Chop marks in relief. This type of chopmark has letters raised in relief against a plain background, like a hallmark. Such chop marks are rarely seen on trade dollars.
6. Assay chopmarks. A special chopmark of the No.5 type, in raised relief, made by a banker or assayer. These are usually rectangular in shape and have two or more characters in relief. Seldom seen on trade dollars. F.M. Rose writes that these chop marks often come in pairs or other multiples on a coin (coins in general; not specifically trade dollars), and that coins with assay chopmarks rarely have additional chopmarks of other types.
7. Letter chopmarks using letters of the Latin alphabet (sometimes appearing backward), with the letter S being the most common. If other chopmarks are found on a coin in addition to a letter chop, they will often be large chopmarks or a mixture of large and small.
8. Number chopmarks usually consisting of one Arabic number, with 5 being the most common and 8 next.
9. Manchu chopmarks have characters in Manchu script and are very rare.
10. Banker's ink chopmarks applied in black, blue, red, and purple ink, a style not particularly relevant to trade dollars and, apparently, not used before the 1880s. (Other types of marks include applied paper and presentation chop marks , the latter consisting of elaborate ink drawings; neither is relevant to trade dollars.)
Many symbols and characters are not translatable into English. Among those that are, F.M. Rose cited the following meanings, among many others (taken from a variety of coin types): academy, arrow, blue, Buddha, Chiang (family name), commodity, dollar, fat, forever, husband, immortal, master, scholar, silver, speech, star, tendon, Tung (family name), wealth, wood, and Yang Kim Hong (Siamese banker).