Coins of the Modern Chinese Empire

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Once upon a time, Britain had an Empire. But nothing lasts forever.

Hong Kong 1997 handover ceremony (Transfer of Sovereignty).

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The years pass, and things start to change.

But you are not sure how, and you don't really notice.

Then you wake up one day, and the world seems different.

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Australia.

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Equatorial Guinea, 10 000 francos, 1997.

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Liberia.

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Mongolia.

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Rwanda.

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Sierra Leone.

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Togo.  Year of the Snake.

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Zambia.

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Canada.

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The coin designs that I have shown here represent a cultural aspect of China. Politically and economically, China is rising and is now flexing its muscles on the international stage and attracting some criticism. Do you think that this will affect the issuance of Chinese New Year collector coins around the world? Will political matters intrude into this theme that has almost become an international numismatic tradition in the 21st century?

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Most coins are issued to circulate as money. However, in the 1970s, a new trend started, small at first but with increasing force to issue items looking like commemorative coins meant to be hoarded and to a considerable extent with subjects that are unimportant, unconnected to the issuing country or without a discernible subject. I'll call them fluff here. To understand the importance of fluff, here is a simple statistic: the 9th edition of the 21st century volume of the KM catalogue, which covers around 15 years of the century, counts 1200 pages. Extrapolated to 100 years, that is 8000 pages. The 36th edition of the 20th century volume of the KM catalogue, which covers 100 years of the century, has 2200 pages, an increase of 364% in a time when demand for coins from consumers went down.

Commemorative coins were known before and they continued to be issued, but their target audience was taken over by fluff. The supply of circulating coins is largely by state mints. Demand is from banks and other large scale coin users, who, in turn, react on demand from consumers.

The production of fluff is to a significant extent organised and sometimes home made by private companies. Demand comes directly from consumers. Advertising is therefore a good indicator of fluff. True to form, marketing seeks to whip up demand with misinformation, aimed at the sub-target group of the fluff: people with a bit of money and connected to the subject or ignorant of the forces and risks of precious metal trading. In the end, buyers are collectors of - normally badly rendered - pictures in metal at highly inflated prices in a form that is very difficult to impossible to on-sell.

The pieces shown above are all fluff. As a collection, they are excellent illustration of fluff. Many, if not all were sold by fluff-producers. All were sold at a price far above denomination. Their subjects have virtually nothing or nothing at all to do with their issuing country. The subject are often unimportant, such as the cycle-name of a year. They are not executed in a practical coin metal. They were subject of advertising. They have a distinct target group. The early ones could be marketed to overseas Chinese, but private wealth in China has increased and restrictions on private holdings of precious metal - still quite severe in the 1970s - are relaxed, making the Chinese in China an increasingly attractive target group, the more so because precious metals are still considered an inflation hedge in China, even in the face of the enormous agio on fluff.

In conclusion, these pieces do not show any Chinese influence on any other country. They show that "there's a sucker born every minute" and more and more of them are born in China.

Peter

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That makes good sense. I was wondering who in my country, for instance, would be interested in such pieces.

As for 'fluff', there seems to be a bottomless appetite for it. When the Isle of Man didn't issue a Christmas-themed 50 pence one year, there was a big hue and cry, so next year IOM made sure to issue one.

What drives 'fluff' is partly increased wealth and consumers looking for something to spend their money on. Apart from that, most collectors are men, and according to psychologists, the collecting urge in men is driven by the primeval hunter-gatherer instinct. Once one starts collecting coins, there is an urge to collect and complete a set. Collectors are clever enough to devise their own idea of a set, of course, and there is never any shortage of themes to collect. The hunt potentially never ends and continually regenerates itself.

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Another example of the Chinese-empire-by-stealth.

Maybe Nostradamus was right, after all.