A brief introduction of China’s proof Circulated coins

本帖被靜水深流設(shè)置為精華(2010-09-14)

????? Similarly with the China’s expensive metal coins (gold, silver, platinum, palladium coins), China’s circulated coins also have some proof versions. Most of the circulated coins have both the ordinary and the proof versions. But there are exceptional, some circulated coins might only have one version, ordinary or proof.
??????? The following of this paper will be divided into 4 parts. It will be the definition of proof coin, China’s Circulated coin, Ordinary vs. proof version and Postscript.

1. Definition of Proof coin:
????? A proof coin is a coin struck using a special, high-quality minting process, and made especially for collectors. Modern proof coins often have mirror-like fields and frosted devices, although proof coins struck prior to the mid twentieth century are often distinguished only by their high quality surfaces. In all cases, the term proof always refers to a type of coin, or the way it was struck, and not to a coin's grade.

2. China’s Circulated coin:
?????? The circulated coins issued by PBC can be roughly divided into two types, circulated coins and circulated commemorative coins (It was also called ordinary commemorative coin in recent year). Circulated coin included Chinese Fen(1995~now), the great wall set (1980~1986), China flower set (1991~now). Circulated commemorative coins are coins issued by PBC to commemorate some important events, historical people. Special commemorative coins such as wildlife treasure, world cultural heritage are also classified to this series.

3.Ordinary vs. proof version (China’s Circulated Commemorative Coin):
???????? In order to let collectors to have a vivid image of proof circulated commemorative coins, we present some pictures to show the difference of ordinary and proof coins.
The following picture will show us this difference.
The first one is China’s Monkey year 1 Yuan coin: (proof version VS ordinary version):
The middle and bottom one are the Hoping Project coin:
ordinary VS proof

4.Postscript:
?????? It is really worth noting that we should pay more attention to these proof circulated coins. Some of them are very valuable and tough to find.
The following picture shows us the peace year coins. They are gold, silver and copper-nickle respectively.
Peace year coin

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??????? Can you believe that the copper-nickle one has a better price than the silver one? It is only slightly cheaper than the gold one. I have seen the gold and silver peace year coins on Ebay persistently. While I never saw the proof copper-nickle one appeared on Ebay. Even in China’s domestic market, it’s still very hard for you to find a proof copper-nickle Peace year coin. It is a interesting area of China’s proof circulated commemorative coins. These coins are becoming an inevitable coin series for more and more coin collectors. We hope that you can get some of these coins one day. I will try my best to bring you some new information of these coins.

[ 此帖被tjufinal在2010-09-13 22:01重新編輯 ]