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2 Mun Yong, Depart
| Issuer | Korea › Joseon (1392-1897) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1742-1752 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Cast |
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| Obverse description | The obverse features four Chinese ideograms arranged in a cruciform pattern around a central square hole. Reading clockwise from the top, the characters 常 (Sang) and 平 (Pyong) appear vertically, denoting 'Sangpyeong,' the Joseon Dynasty's Office of Price Stabilization under whose authority the coin was issued. The characters 通 (Tong) and 寶 (Bo) are positioned horizontally, forming the legend 'Tongbo,' meaning 'circulating treasure' or currency. The inscription is rendered in regular script (kaishu) and cast in relief against a plain field. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Chinese (traditional, regular script) |
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| Additional information |
The "Yong, Depart" designation refers to a specific furnace and batch classification within the Joseon treasury minting system, where individual government offices and military bureaus operated their own casting furnaces — each producing coins traceable by the reverse inscription to their issuing department. This particular piece comes from a minting expansion ordered in the 1740s to address chronic coin shortages in the northern provinces, where barter had stubbornly persisted despite decades of official policy pushing cash circulation.
Joseon cash coinage of this period was cast rather than struck, making die variety analysis less applicable than sand-mold batch identification.