Background
I live in Hong Kong, a numismatic hotspot of the world - the city has over 40 coin and banknote shops and I have spent the past decade getting to know them all. Their owners, the dealers and the stock they hold and if they are trustworthy or not.
I have been collecting for over 10 years now and found some absolute treasures in my time here, from rare dies of famous silver art bar creators to chops on very rare host coins such as a chopped silver Imperial Russian Ruble. Gold, Silver and all types of coins have been flowing through the city for decades thanks to it’s laissez-faire approach to antiquities and collectibles and I’m very fortunate to have a front row seat to it all.
If you wish to see some of my other finds, my Instagram is on my profile and one of my stories and many of my posts share some of them.
Having now built relationships with dealers locally, they have figured out my preferences, holding things in the "back office" or digging things out from their collections.
Some of the dealers are above retirement age but continue to collect and deal for the love of the hobby and they appreciate my candor and interest in their wares, sharing unique and fascinating coins they have picked up or come across, asking for help with translating and identifying coins since their language skills aren’t the best being mainly of Chinese ethnicity, and some being so old they don't have access to the online resources the current generation of collectors do.
Through my travels dealers have been separated from those who can be trusted to know what they are talking about to those who cannot. There are still a few dealers who deal exclusively in fakes and are given a wide berth, while some are just genuinely ignorant as to what they have. I have found some great opportunities there and have handled some fantastic coins and history as a result.
Below marks one such story and the adventure I have been through these past 3-4 months from November 2021 to February 2022. When you're finished reading at the very least it should give you food for thought. Whatever the future holds for me and these coins the journey is worth sharing and I hope you think so too.
The Trade Dollars
The entire photo album for the trade dollars can be found via this link
On one of my frequent visits to a shop, the dealer brought out 3 plastic ‘slab’ packets of dollar-sized coins. Their condition was to say the least - horrible. Some of them had the appearance of sea water damage. A lot of the surfaces were all pitted and bubbly - obvious signs of corrosion and exposure to environmental damage but there were also these black and brown marks over a lot of the coins that I could not figure out at the time.
Photos of the initial find.
Further, a lot of the coins had signs of cleaning, some harsh. The streaking was obvious. However this was not present on every coin. Some were left as they were, one had a rainbow teardrop stain which could be assumed was an acid test of some sort.
I immediately broke out my portable Sigma Metalytics Precious Metal Verifier and confirmed they were all scanning positive as 90% pre-1900 silver. Every single one, without exception.
Next, I took out my loup and looked at the surface details, noticing that the mint mark on some of these dollars were still visible. A majority were damaged to such an extent that the mark was no longer readable, but some were marked C C while two were found with an S mint mark.
Top left is S mint mark, the bottom two are CC. The top right is unidentifiable.
A higher resolution image of one done by a friend.
In the end I concluded the dealer had 54 US silver trade dollars from 1874. All share the same date and most of the mint marks are there to suggest they were mostly minted in Carson City with two exceptions from San Francisco.
Speaking to a friend in the hobby, they suggested this was a good sign, if they were all 1 mint mark that might suggest cloning of some sort and would in turn be a red flag.
Asking the dealer how he came across these, he said he bought them in Fujian, China around 2007. They were probably sea salvaged but he didn’t know much else. How they were found, acquired, pulled out of the sea, he couldn’t say. Such details were lost due to the laws in China in regards to these.
That is because the finder would have been legally obliged to hand them over to the state as possession of such things are illegal in China. The finder may therefore have decided to forgo declaring them and sold them quickly to anyone who would take them to avoid prosecution. This however, makes direct attribution to any wreck impossible, as no record, photographs or details of the find would have been recorded nor shared in order to not leave behind a trail of evidence.
Once these ended up in Hong Kong, however, they became fair game, as laws here are different and less strict due to being a former British colony and functioning under a legal frame work of 'One Country Two Systems' which means that although we are a part of China, we have and maintain our own laws that were in place before the handover of 1997.
He also said he couldn’t sell them because the condition was so poor, no local collector wanted them and had been holding them for over a decade in his huge collection until he stumbled across them recently again and brought them out for me. I was the only person he knew who might be "crazy" enough to be interested - I often buy things that to a Chinese collector makes absolutely no sense.
I took a few home to investigate, and brought out a fake trade dollar and a real trade dollar from my collection for comparison. What details could be discerned from the coins appeared to match the real one in my possession.
The left is a fake, the right is a real one from my personal collection. They were used for comparitive purposes only and were not part of the hoard in any shape nor form.
Collectors who specialised in trade dollars and viewed the coins suggested that the type where details are visible are T1 three finger obverse and berry reverse and is consistent with mint records.
They also said the mint marks of the CC variety would be minor or medium. The earlier mint marks are smaller and similar to the 1873 issue compared with the regular CC mint mark. From what could be seen, this appeared to be that both 73 and 74 mint marks were present.
The only other major issue I faced besides their authenticity was I had no clue how they ended up in this manner. Brown, black, stains, dirty and various states of corrosion. It wasn’t until I started asking friends, collectors, historians and dealers that I came across a potential candidate.
The following is written by and shared with permission from US Navy Captain (retired) Robert Wells and his book "Voices from the bottom of the South China Sea" which can be found and purchased at southchinavoices.com if you are so interested.
He has been very helpful in filling in the gaps in this puzzle and although there can be no definitive proof that the coins originated from this wreck, I believe after reading the below information you can at least link items and facts on hand to the coins and this wreck via logic and rule out other possibilities by process of elimination.
The history of the SS Japan
The SS Japan was one of four trans-Pacific sidewheel steamers of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company that were authorized by President Abraham Lincoln in February 1865 and constructed in New York between 1866-1868.
The four ships began their service in 1867 from San Francisco and transported the mails, cargo and thousands of Chinese emigrants to work on the trans-continental railroad, support mining and agriculture in California and build the nation’s Chinatowns
Almost 100% of the Chinese emigrants were from Guangdong Province.
Aboard each of the steamers and was a “treasure tank” in the forward hold of the ship. The treasure tank was 28 feet long and five feet deep-wide at one end and pointed at the other-and very much shaped as a flatiron.
After 1873, the treasure tank’s on the Pacific Mail steamers were loaded with new US Trade Dollars from the San Francisco and Carson City mints. These trade dollars were to be used to compete against the Mexican dollar in Hong Kong, Guangdong and Fujian provinces for tea and textile trade.
The demand signal for the new trade dollars was strong at the time of the treasure tank loadout of new 1874 Trade Dollars.
The Final Voyage of the SS Japan
At the time of her sailing, the SS Japan was the largest sidewheel steamer in the world when she burned at sea during a fierce midnight fire on December 17, 1874 and sank.
The ship was on a routine 33-day trans-Pacific voyage from San Francisco to Hong Kong via Yokohama, Japan and had departed San Francisco on November 14, 1874 with a full load of new US Trade Dollars loaded in her forward treasure tank.
She concluded an uneventful passage to Japan and had departed Yokohama six days before after loading coal and had 557 people aboard, including 425 Chinese emigrants returning home after their work in California.
When the tragic morning of December 18, 1874 dawned, the SS Japan was gone with 151 crew and passengers saved in lifeboats and almost 400 Chinese emigrants lost in the fire, on the raging sea and within the sinking hulk of the great ship.
Also aboard the ship were twenty tons of general cargo and one hundred and sixty eight (168) boxes of Trade Dollar treasure with a value of $358,508.
The shocking news of the loss of the SS Japan caused the search and rescue dispatch of two ships of the US Navy’s Asiatic fleet from Hong Kong to the wreck site two days later.
They found no survivors, recovered a few Chinese bodies among the burnt ship's debris field.
The Salvage and Trade Dollar Recovery
The ship’s return to Hong Kong began a quest for wreck site location and an Admiralty claim resulting in a three year salvage of the SS Japan’s treasure tank and over $300,000 trade dollars-many dated 1874 from the San Francisco mint.
The salvage reports of the day (1875-1877) indicated that the recovered Trade Dollars were in a roll “stuck together and black by heat.” They were also in mostly good condition, though nearly all black and heavily oxidized. Some near the surface of the tank was partially melted by the heat of the burning steamer, and many boxes are charred and broken. Some of the dollars are bright as now when brought to the surface, but they speedily turn black when exposed to air.”
The last recorded time that the wreck and trade dollars were salvaged was in 1877.
Until around 2007 when, after more that 135 years since the wreck landed on the seafloor and the sand covered mounds and the wreck structure of the SS Japan’s treasure tank, possibly due to a fishing boat dragging a heavy net along the bottom of the sea floor likely scraped away a small cache of 1874 trade dollars. The 1874 cache is blackened like those recovered in the 1870’s (from the treasure tank location in proximity to the intense coal fire adjacent to the coal bunkers forward), the correct date (1874) and from mints that supplied the trade dollars aboard the SS Japan’s treasure tank (San Francisco and Carson City).
A detailed background of the SS Japan and its tragic final voyage can be read in the Voices From the Bottom of the South China Sea story.
These recovered trade dollars, if evaluated as legitimate, represent a new chapter of the story and allow us to experience the history of that era and recall the lives of the Chinese and American passengers and their final moments in a fire in a raging sea.
Fake or real - a critical analysis
Below are points as to why these are real as opposed to being fake. Call it wishful thinking but a process of logic and elimination of concepts based on prior experience has led me to this path. Each thought is laid out in a manner which can be pulled apart and examined by the reader and also allow me to put my thoughts into order. Hopefully by presenting my facts and theories we can share some counterpoints or support for my current thinking.
1. The damage is too inconsistent and individual to be done easily
If you examine the group photos and each coin individually, you can see that none of the damage is consistent. Some of them are bright, shiny silver while others are stained as brown and black as coffee. Some are cleaned, some are chipped and cracked, some are so worn that if you presented a collector with an image of that one face they would not be able to identify the host coin without context of the group.
2. They all verify as silver
They pass the ping test and resonate like silver dollars do - like a fine, high pitched bell.
Most fakes are made of other metals, with cores of copper and base metals or plated with silver in order to pass a scrutinising eye while using the fear of damaging a coin with an acid test in order to protect its appearance of authenticity.
There are fakes that use silver too, but this is a batch that deals in potentially over 1kg of precious metal, more if there are others, a significant investment in the current market. If they were making trade dollars out of silver, would it not be better to make one or two very high quality coins, rather than a batch of 50 all made of silver and then disguise them with excessive damage?
Various sources have said most coins in this condition that are silver or gold and end up in China are fed to the furnace without a second thought, often regardless of history or type rarity. If they don't think they can get their money back from selling the coin directly it will be scrapped and sold for metal weight. Thankfully, for whatever reason the people who handled these decided not to.
A Sigma metalytics PMV is not foolproof. Having scanned coins and cutlery that were clearly marked or known as non-silver but showed up as precious, there is room for error. However it is also prudent to ask who would go to such lengths as to create a batch of coins that could and were explicitly designed to defeat the device - again, this is beyond the norm for a scammer and an exceptional effort when there are other, simpler methods to fool a prospective collector. They certainly do not stop to consider someone is walking around town with a scanner in the first place!
3. They have no chop marks.
Most trade dollars from this era right up until the 1930s were sent to China for the purpose of trade. However, there is always someone who ruins the party. People were sending fake coins to ancient China to try and swindle merchants and so the Chinese and Asian community would take to "chopping" their coins with test cuts, marks and characters from their language to pierce the surface of the coin and look for base metals underneath.
It stands to reason based on the history of the ship that these never made it to China. If they did, they would undoubtedly have been "chopped" especially if they were badly burned and damaged by their end at the bottom of the South China Sea. The merchants in China back then chopped everything and left nothing to chance. It was their livelihood and sole source of business. They probably cared little for the designs and aspects of the coin other than the precious metal content and weight - unless they were training others in how to identify real and fake coins. Below is a link to a blog of a famous historian at the British museum who shares books that did just this.
https://chinesemoneymatters.wordpress.com/2018/02/16/41-chinese-guides-for-identifying-silver-dollars-and-other-coins-19th-century/
On the other hand in modern times it is not unknown for some unsavoury characters to chop coins to hide damage or details that might detract from the value of the coin - or make a coin more desirable by adding chops to coins that would have never or rarely made it to China for trade.
In the case of the latter, since trade dollars were made for trade with Asia and are as common as water over here we can dismiss that theory. The only rare US type trade dollars with chops are those that don't have a mint mark and are from the Philadelphia mint since it would have been exorbitantly expensive for the US government to make silver dollars in the East and then send them by train across the continent to the West when they can make coins in Carson City and San Francisco. I have seen and acquired exactly 1 P mint trade dollar with chops in my many years of doing this and it was an expensive acquisition for myself and the parties involved.
In the case of the former, they are already in such horrendous condition it is a struggle to conclude how chopping these would help the value increase. They would have to "dish" them, that is chop them to such an extent that they curve like a bowl and even then, such fake chops are identifiable and obvious - the font and calligraphy and the repetitive nature would stand out to the regular chop collector.
With all this in mind, and the fact that these dollars had no chops, is indicative of the fact that they were loaded freshly minted from the factories but never made it to shore to fulfill their role as a medium of exchange.
4. The dates and type match the records of what went down with the SS Japan - no other ship went down with similar cargo.
As informed by Robert Wells : “The Pacific Mail Steamships were equipped with Treasure Tanks to ship the official US Trade Dollars to China and Japan from 1873-1878. During this time, there were two ships lost by fire.The SS America in Yokohama Harbor in 1872 with all treasure coinage being recovered. This is before the Trade Dollars were minted. The SS Japan was the second ship lost by fire in December between 17-18 1874 with a Trade Dollar treasure tank loaded with the new trade dollars. 168 boxes were loaded worth $358,000.”
5. The other metrics are there - such as they are considering the condition.
The coins were weighed and measured with an electronic micrometre caliper. None I measured were 27.2 grams or 38.1 mm in diameter but were all close. None were over the original weight or larger than 38.1 mm. Many examples were 37.8-9mm in diameter (a difference of less than 1%) and many had lost 1-4g in weight, especially those with large gouges, severe damage or very worn faces. When measuring the space between the CC mint marks, it was within range of .55mm making them medium type.
Considering these were roasted by intense fire and then were corroded by the sea, it stands to reason they would lose some mass, weight and loss from their original state but since they were milled, well protected and packed deep in the treasure trunk, they were able to maintain their overall form.
One might consider what happened to coins that were recovered from the World Trade Centre vaults after 9/11, having been exposed to massive temperature fluctuations after the buildings collapsed on top of them. Add over 100 years of sea water exposure, one can only imagine what this does to coins.
Excerpted from the book with permission from Robert Wells, page 161 quotes the salvor:
“The tank was probably red-hot when it was submerged, and collapsed by water pressure, as one would crush a paper bag in the hand.”
The most important factor is that there were no severe deviations from the expected norm. If they were significantly heavier or lighter, around 20g or 30g, or over 1mm in diameter larger or smaller there would be cause for concern.
6. Despite the salvage operation many thousands of dollars were left behind and unrecovered.
From Robert Wells, “Between 1875-1877, about $300,000 were recovered by Captain Roberts leaving about $50,000 behind. The 1874 dates were determined by the recovery of the 1874-S dollars to be the date of the Trade Dollar treasure.”
Chinese divers are probably not going down to the wreck for reasons explained earlier, but rather it is suspected that these were pulled up by fishermen doing ‘dragnet fishing’ or bottom trawling. That is, to drag a very heavy net along the bottom of the sea and pull up whatever sea life they happen to find.
It's a favoured method by commercial fishing companies because it can catch large quantities of product in one go, and considering the voracious appetite for seafood by the Chinese population, it stands to reason that fishermen might go 20 nautical miles off shore and see what they can bring back home.
If the wreck has been severely damaged, rusted or rotted away - the composition of these ships, the treasure tank and the boxes holding the dollars were a combination of iron and wood and the ship was burned so severely it snapped into two pieces, exposing the contents more easily - very heavy nets would be able to pick up debris and coins from the wreck.
If there were divers working in this area for other reasons, they may have picked up a few, but surely they would return to get more if they have the ability to do so? It is a possibility to consider.
Whatever the case may be, there are still tens of thousands of these coins unaccounted for, and even an unopened safe with several more thousands of dollars inside that were never recovered as it went down with the other half of the ship that was not found by the salvage team in 1877.
That leaves the possibility that more will surface in the future.
7. Damage is consistent with the report from the original salvage divers and operators.
As mentioned by Robert Wells, during the salvage operation of 1877, divers were able to reach into the treasure tank by putting their arm through a hole and pull out ‘coal-like clumps’ which after cleaning were revealed to be trade dollars.
As excerpted with permission from Robert Wells, pg 160 of the book quotes the salvors: “The lump on examination proved to consist of 24 American trade dollars, burned and oxidized so much that they required a great deal of scouring to reveal their true character.”
Most of the trade dollars share his description, with various levels of black, brown and scoured surfaces. I suspect these were scoured recently as their condition was so poor it would be difficult to ascertain what they were until cleaned significantly.
Another reason for their scouring is that someone attempted to improve the condition of the trade dollars to make selling them easier. Since not all coins were scoured, perhaps they gave up halfway.
8. This wreck is not well known and does not appear in any Chinese literature, numismatic or otherwise until the book was published.
Articles about the book did not widely circulate in China until 2015 and beyond, when the book was first published and then promoted in China. Articles from this period are linked below.
https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/features/bookclub/The-Bottom-of-the-South-China-Sea-02202015084252.html?encoding=simplified
http://dzb.jmrb.com:8080/jmrb/html/2016-01/07/content_426587.htm
These coins were supposedly discovered and acquired in 2007 - there is always the human faculty for lying but the amount of detail that would be required to fake coins exactly to the specifications of the wreck beggars belief.
Considering less than 1% of the Chinese population is literate in English this makes it hard to imagine someone acquiring the book and then making these fakes with such accuracy and commitment.
9. I have not seen other coins with similar damage and type since I have been watching the local and international market closely for the past few years.
When fakes entire the market, they usually do so in volume. Walking down the street markets and shops of Hong Kong, one can easily spot the fakes as they all look the same. A dirty, dusty patina, rust and grime over crude, but shiny coins.
I have not seen any other American trade dollars that match the details of those in question in over 3 years of weekly scouting - and would notice them as I have been actively looking for shipwreck coins, trade dollars and chop marked dollars during this period.
10. Others have been spotted in the US at coin shows.
Once the discovery of these was shared online a month or so ago, someone came out from the community and declared that he had seen similar coins at an ANA show in Philadelphia in 2018. This consisted of a batch of about 20-30 pieces in the same condition, and that an investigation was carried out that confirmed they matched the dies from the Carson City mint.
11. Other collectors besides myself have been able to handle these.
Finally, other people have seen and handled these coins. Approximately a dozen or so. Since then, no complaints towards their authenticity have arisen. A lot of these owners are experienced and knowledgeable collectors who would spot issues with a type of coin they are very familiar with. The quantity of fakes for this type would cause them to raise alarm bells if there was a need.
Conclusion
Probabilities favor these coins being legitimate trade dollars, with the SS Japan representing a plausible conduit
If these are fake, this would be one of the most sophisticated attacks on the hobby since perhaps the creation of modern transfer dies. The amount of knowledge and technical know-how to create fakes from such a specific or any wreck would show such dedication to forgery it would be like trying to create a fake Van Gogh or Picasso and get them past Sotheby's.
So many details align from the damage to the type to the facts that have been collected that any other reasons seem impossible to me. Perhaps this is why this essay is written and shared - to ensure I am not suffering from confirmation bias.
So decide for yourself and thank you for your time to go through my excuse of an essay. I look forward to hearing your opinions and critique. A nicer example will be submitted to PCGS and a few others who own them now intend to as well. A shipwreck designation is not possible and not sought-after; merely that they are genuine.
Thank you for attending my TED talk.
UPDATE 22/2/2022: Since this was written, the coins have been XRFed and confirmed that they are not only silver, but also in higher silver purity condition like coins from the El Cazador shipwreck.
From Swamperbob of Coin Community to help explain the science of salt water damage on silver coins:
A basic explanation is that the sea water actually eats away at the copper in the silver coin first - making the coin a higher purity. This would explain why the coins are lighter - they have lost mass in the form of their copper.
The results vary between each test, some only have 1-2% copper some have more, all the coins are 90% silver or more - this is a good sign as it may demonstrate natural and random corrosion of the copper - something a forger would find too troublesome to do.
I would have loved to x-ray them myself - however since we are under old British laws, radioactive material used by XRF is illegal to use and possess here :( 
