Chopmarks On Coins Question?

I am totally on board with you, I too would love to learn more about chopmarks and their history. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask a few questions on this post to, so I hope you don't mind me piggy backing you .

1. I've noticed that chopmarks can come in different sizes. When I compare chopmarks on US Trade dollars to chopmarks on 8 reales, the chopmarks on US Trade dollars appear to have been made with a larger font stamp. Could someone illuminate as to why this is? Were larger counterstamps used later on and smaller ones being much older? Can the age of a counterstamp on a coin be determined based on the font size?

2. Are there any examples of rarer identifiable counterstamps that may command a premium?

3. What are the earliest known examples of counterstamps being used in the Orient?

Firstly, chopmarks are not countermarks or counterstamps as such: These were usually marks applied after striking the coin, by the mint or govt agency to mark the coin for some purpose.

Regarding the chopmarks themselves, metal was NOT removed from the chopmark for the purpose of assaying, the chopmark was applied AFTER passing the assayer's tests.
Usually, merchants(mostly money changers or local banks in China) would use a specially trained assayer called a "shroff", to test/verify the silver coin. The most accurate way was to test "specific weight", but this was too time consuming for hundreds of coins on the spot. The shroff used a combination of sensory skills to evaluate the coin: weight, balance, tapping sound, which could take just a second or two, and the coin was then stamped with the chopmark(probably passed to another person to apply the chop).

Among merchants in a particular city/region, their chop marks became known, so if that chop mark was applied, it would be regarded as genuine. If a coin left that city/region, it would reevaluated in a new city/region, and a new chop mark applied.

Chopmarks come in different sizes, but it seems that the size was generally determined by the merchants and what was in vogue at the time: earlier ones were smaller(maybe late 1700s up to mid 1800s), over a period they grew larger(mid 1800s to 1900), then grew smaller (after 1900).



Here is a Japanese silver 1 Yen, with both a countermark/counterstamp, and a chopmark.
The countermark is the circular mark, which designates that the coin was to be exported from Japan for trade (not to be used in Japan for currency). This was called a "gin" or "silver" mark in Japan.
Marked as it is on the left side, it shows that the countermark was applied in the Osaka Mint. If applied on the right side, it would be the Tokyo Mint. (I have other 1 yen coins with the Tokyo "gin" countermark)

The chopmark is to the left of the countermark. (see detail in the second photo)

The first article to mention Chop marks in a numismatic context was actually written in French by Paul M. Bordeaux in 1903 and was published in the Reveue de Numismatique Francaise. It was translated into English and published in Spink's Monthly Numismatic Circular (9-10) dated September - October, 1915 ppg 559-563.

Paul Bordeaux connected the issuance of a large number of counterfeit 8R in 1796 by England as part of the war effort against Spain as the cause for the application of the chops. They were at first small and were used to cut into the surface of the coin to expose silver clad copper Sheffield Plate counterfeits flooding the market. Th punch exposed the copper to view.

So it was his conclusion that the presence of counterfeits caused chop marking in the first place.

The schroff's were the people who initially tested and allowed world coins to circulate in China. They started punching the coins to detect the forgery.

Merchants marked coins to identify that they had handled the coins - like signatures on a check that was passed along as a form of paper money before paper money existed.