An extremely rare pattern or essai of Silver Chinese Dragon Coin, the first dollar of the Anking Mint of Anhwei were auction by Stack's Bowers in their April 2013 Hong Kong Auction on 1st April for $144,000 excluding tax and commision. The 1897 dragon silver dollar is struck in Silvered Brass with PCGS SP-63+ Secure Holder. The price estimate between $250,000 - $300,000.
The Anhwei Mint formerly located in the city of Anking was originally founded in the 23rd year of Kuang Hsu (1897). Initially this mint was established for the purpose of producing local silver coinage with the intent to replace the then popular 8 Reales. Clearly this goal was not achieved as the 8 Reales remained in circulation well into the 20th century.
Anhwei Mint silver coinage generally remains scarce to rare, suggesting rather small mintages. This short lived mint produced coinage for approximately two years before coining operations ceased and the mint was dismantled. Perhaps the reason for the short lived nature of this mint was the lower purity metallic content of its silver emissions. Coinage from this province was not widely accepted by neighboring provinces as it was found to be lower purity silver than the products of other mints. This is perhaps the reason silver issues from this mint are often found with many chopmarks. After the mint was dismantled, a new mint in Anhwei was established in the 28th year of Kuang Hsu (1902); however, its activities were limited to the production of copper coinage. Production of all Anhwei silver coinage occurred at the first mint in Anking.
The coin is clearly of special manufacture intended for presentation purposes. It exhibits a bold full strike with all characters and details sharp and fully stuck up.
The recent discovery of production material shed new light on the creation of this coinage. The findings included patterns, dies, hubs and a series of punches from the archives of the Otto Beh company, Esslingen, Germany. Before this, the origin of the dies used to produce coinage for the provinces of Anhwei, Chekiang, Fengtien, Heilungkiang and Sungarei was only speculated upon. Otto Beh was a specialist in the production of seals and dies. From neighboring Goppingen, Louis Schuler received an order for coining presses in 1895 and commissioned Otto Beh to manufacture the dies. In 1897 and 1898, Beh supplied Schuler with over 200 dies for Chinese coins. At the time, this was the largest order that the company had ever received. Schuler, which started as a Locksmith’s shop in 1839, had grown to become one of the world’s leaders in metal forming and in fact supplied the aforementioned mints with coining presses.
The English letters "T. A. S. C." are neatly placed in a clockwise manner in the field. Wenchao suggests it is an abbreviation of "TATSING AN-HWEI SILVER COIN", meaning "Anhwei silver coin of the Great Qing". One of the rarest dollars in the provincial dragon series, with only a few examples known today.
Source: stacksbowers.com
