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Northern Song Dynasty (full length 960-1126)
Part Two 1067-1126

The latter half of the Northern Song Dynasty has many of the most interesting and most beautiful coins in existence. My favorite coin is the Zheng He Tong Bao which exists in many stunning variants like the one pictured above.

The coins below are listed in chronological order, and I have provided an example of the two, or sometimes three, basic script styles of the coin issued. On the left will be a formal or running script coin, and on the right a cursive or seal script coin with the same legend. Over time I will make variants pages for each coin to display many variations that exist. If a section is blank it means that I do not yet own one of that coin. The Shao Sheng Tong Bao exists only in the formal script so I have shown the backside of the coin on the right.

I have written the characters below on the left using Japanese encoding. It will appear garbled if your browser is not set to read Japanese, but you can ignore it if you do not need the characters.

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Jia You Yuan Bao

25 mm x 1 mm

Formal script not yet

Jia You Tong Bao

23.8 mm x 1.2 mm

Ji Ping Yuan Bao

l 24 mm x 1 mm
c 24 mm x 1.2 mm
r 23.1 mm x 1.5 mm

Ji Ping Tong Bao

l 25 mm x 1 mm
r 24 mm x 1 mm

Xi Ning Yuan Bao1068-1077

This coin has a number of very different writing styles.

tl 24 mm x 1.5 mm
tr 24.5 mm x 1 mm
bl 23.5 x 1 mm
br

ą‡”JŒ³›

Yuan Feng Tong Bao 1078-1085

I think this coin has more recognized, and subtle, variants than any other single issue of a Chinese coin. The coin on the right is a seal script version. Furthermore, a formal script version exists but is quite rare. However, a common formal script version was made in great quantities in Japan in the mid-1600's which you can see on my Nagasaki page.

Œ³–L’Ź›

Yuan You Tong Bao 1086-1093

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Œ³—S’Ź›

Shao Sheng Yuan Bao 1094-1097

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µ¹Œ³›

Shao Sheng Tong Bao 1094-1097

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µ¹’Ź›

Yuan Fu Tong Bao 1098-1110

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Œ³•„’Ź›

Sheng Song Yuan Bao 1101

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¹‘vŒ³›

Chong Ning Tong Bao 1102

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āM”J’Ź›

Only formal script, not yet reverse sidd of formal script

Da Guan Tong Bao 1107-1110

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‘åŠĻ’Ź›

Zheng He Tong Bao 1111-1117

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­˜a’Ź›

Zhong he Tong Bao 1118

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d˜a’Ź›

formal script not yet seal script not yet

Xuan He Yuan Bao 1119

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é˜aŒ³›

seal script not yet

Xuan He Tong Bao 1119

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é˜a’Ź›

formal script not yet seal script not yet

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