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ROC
Empress Dowager Cixi Portrait
Fantasy Silver Coin
1 Dollar
民國
慈禧后像
臆造銀幣
一元
Item number: A2619
Year: ND
Material: Silver
Size: 37.5 x 37.5 mm
Provenance: Spink 2023
This is a one-yuan silver coin fabricated by later generations, likely cast during or after the Republican period.
The obverse features a frontal half-length portrait of Empress Dowager Cixi, dressed in elaborately decorated informal attire. Her hair is styled in the “flag head” fashion, also known as the “two-part head”, named for its flat side buns extending horizontally to both sides, with tassells hanging from the ends. The image may have been derived from “Imperial Portrait of Her Majesty the Empress Dowager of the Great Qing”, painted in AD 1906 by the Japanese artist Kasai Torajirō and printed by Seiun-dō Printing Co., Ltd. However, the Qing dynasty officially issued only one coin depicting a human portrait—the Sichuan rupee featuring the Guangxu Emperor.
The reverse is modelled after the Sichuan rupee, with a single vertical flower motif encircled by the characters “Minted in Sichuan Province”. The surrounding design consists of foliage and tendrils arranged in a decorative pattern, with a three-leaf motif positioned at the upper right of the character “province”. The overall design appears to have been borrowed from Sichuan rupees minted during the early Republican period.
According to Wang Wusheng’s “Shu’an Secret Records” from the late Qing dynasty, in AD 1894 (Guangxu 20th year), Gangyi, the Governor of Guangdong, minted thirty thousand silver coins and brought them to the capital, coinciding with a eunuch’s offering to mark Empress Dowager Cixi’s sixtieth birthday. This suggests that the coins were regular currency and not specially issued for the celebration; the forger merely took advantage of this historical anecdote. Furthermore, the reverse design borrowed from the Sichuan rupee was only introduced after the first year of the Republic. These discrepancies render the coin implausible and thus it must be regarded as a fabrication.