User:Donald Trung/Mother coins

This page serves as "the editing history" for the Wikipedia article Mother coin prior to its launch.

Original draft


Mother coins or seed coins were coins used during the early stages of the casting process to produce Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Ryukyuan, and Vietnamese cash coins. As cash coins were produced using sand casting mother coins were first produced to form the basis for all subsequent cash coins to be released into circulation. Under the Han dynasty in China mints started producing cash coins using bronze master moulds to solve inconsistencies in circulating coins, this only worked partially and by the sixth century mother coins were introduced to solve these inconsistencies almost completely. The Japanese adopted the usage of mother coins in the 600s and they were used to manufacture cast Japanese coins until the Meiji period. In the manufacturing process mother coins were used to impress the design in moulds made from easily worked metals such as tin which were placed in fine wet sand moulds made from, after this a rectangular frame made from pear wood filled with fine wet sand, possibly mixed with clay, and enhanced with either charcoal or coal dust to allow the molten metal to smoothly flow would act as a layer that separates the two parts of the coin moulds. after cooling down a "coin tree" (錢樹) or long metallic stick with the freshly minted cash coins attached in the shape of "branches" would be extracted from the mould and these coins could be broken off and strung together.

The introduction and subsequent usage of mother coins in the casting process proved to be paramount in controlling the quality of the cash coins. Only minor differences between mother coins remained even if the carver was very skilled. If mother coins had even the slightest error than this error would be visible on every cash coin that would be produced from it, which is why mother coins with any imperfections were quickly withdrawn from the production process before this could impact a large number of coins meant for circulation. Due to the high quality control mother coins with deformities are almost never found.

Ancestor coins
Ancestor coins also known as engraved mother coins  were introduced around the turn of the eighteenth century to improve the quality control of mother coins, these ancestor coins were used to cast more mother coins and from a single ancestor thousands of mother coins could be cast. The production process of making mother coins with ancestor coins was the same as it was for the casting of circulation coins from mother coins, however these coins were usually only produced for a new reign title, when preparing to cast new cash coins with new inscriptions for a recently ascended emperor, a mint would first engrave an ancestor coin out of fine brass which would form the basis for mother coins. The introduction of ancestor coins under the Manchu Qing dynasty lead to all mints having more consistently produced coinages and smaller variations between the coins produced by separate mints in both inscription (or legend) as well as in quality.

Redirects

 * 1) REDIRECT Mother coin


 * 1) Mother coins.
 * 2) Mother Coin.
 * 3) Mother Coins.
 * 4) Seed coin.
 * 5) Seed coins.
 * 6) Mother cash coin.
 * 7) Mother cash coins.
 * 8) Seed cash coins.
 * 9) Seed cash coin.
 * 10) 母钱.
 * 11) 母錢.
 * 12) mǔ qián.


 * 1) REDIRECT Mother coin


 * 1) Ancestor coin.
 * 2) Ancestor coins.
 * 3) Ancestor cash coin.
 * 4) Ancestor cash coins.
 * 5) 祖钱.
 * 6) 祖錢.
 * 7) zǔ qián.
 * 8) 雕母.
 * 9) diāo mǔ.
 * 10) Engraved mother coin.
 * 11) Engraved mother coins.

Standard source

 * July 2018.