The back story is that I went to my favorite central California coin shop several months ago and the owner had just purchased a collection of around 40 cast Chinese coins of various sizes and designs from an older woman who said they belonged to her father-in-law. She said he was a merchant marine in Asia between WWI and WWII and he picked them up on his travels. I bought around half of them for the fun of trying to ID them. Some are rather worn, small denomination 1 Cash coins from the late 1600's to the late 1800's with the granular background of a sand-casting. According to Hartill (Cast Chinese Coins, 2nd ed.) they are all extremely common varieties and I have no reason to doubt their authenticity. However, there were a few that I believe are reproductions including one that is clearly related to the Japanese 100 Mon coin.
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces11614.html
I recently returned from Japan where I bought several 100 Mon coins from a reputable coin dealer so the coin in this mix immediately caught my attention. It looks like a hundred mon that had been carved out of chocolate and left in the sun for a bit. It is exceptionally thin with "soft" looking characters and is made of a metal I don't recognize. There are also several very large cast coins whose designs match those in Hartill, but have significantly less defined characters (mushy is the word I would use), I read somewhere that both "big Chinese coins" and Japanese 100 Mon coins were frequently reproduced in the early 20th Century for the tourist trade or for luck. Does anyone here have any insights into these coins? Thank you!
