It was great Emperor Qin Shihuangdi, whose tomb is still admired by countless tourists in Xi'an today, who unified the empire during his reign and who ensured that the local currency of western China became the currency of China as a whole. The result was the cash coin, which circulated in China for almost two millennia.

You will find some interesting examples showcasing the evolution of cash coins at Künker's upcoming auction. The spectrum ranges from the Chen dynasty to the Qing dynasty.

Of particular interest is a Chinese cash coin created by the Heaton / Birmingham private mint, which was highly active in China at the time. It is probably an early, unpublished pattern intended to demonstrate the superiority of machine-minting compared to traditional methods. After all, in contrast to modern coins, Chinese cash coins were cast, not minted.

While the Heaton Mint in Birmingham certainly had superior technical expertise, the same could not be said for its cultural understanding. They simply based their issues on the wrong model: a Chinese cash coin which, although rather common, had long been outdated.

A significant part of the collection consists of some of China's earliest minted issues, from a time when the country collaborated with European machine manufacturers in an attempt to adapt its coinage system to Western standards. Connoisseurs can look forward to extremely rare patterns that were produced, for example, through the collaboration between the Schuler machine factory in Göppingen - which still is selling coin presses to the worlds' mints today - and the Otto Beh engraving company in Esslingen.But the auction also features numerous highly interesting early issues created by the Chinese mints that soon were established across the country.

From a historical perspective, the most interesting period was the one that followed the end of imperial rule, when the future of China was at stake. Many forces competed for influence at the time, leaving their own issues before the communist government prevailed and largely shielded the country from outside influences.

In the late 1970s, China began issuing commemorative coins for the international collectors' market. From the outset, those responsible placed great importance on incorporating their own culture into the coin designs, using their coins as ambassadors for the country.This has made China's modern coins more interesting, as quite a few sets were produced in very small quantities because Western interest in these coins collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Mintage figures themselves say relatively little about the rarity of the pieces, as the announced mintage figures were often not fully utilized, or the coins were melted down at a later date.

To order a catalog contact Künker, Nobbenburger Straße 4a, 49076 Osnabrück; phone: +49 541 / 962020; fax: +49 541 / 9620222; or via e-mail: service@kuenker.de. You can access the auction catalogs online at www.kuenker.de. If you want to submit your bid from your computer at home, please remember to register for this service in good time.