Lot 5689

Description

China, Qing (Ch'ing) Dynasty, bamboo, wood, ivory and one silver (illustrated), cash tokens or tally sticks c.late 19th century, various issues, as long sticks usually with a hole at the end, and stamped with Chinese characters one or both sides, several have numbers also added, the silver (illustrated) for two jiao c.1930s from Jiansu Province, (See Spink-Taisai Sale 15, 2-3 Sept., 1993, lot 715 illustrates similar examples and Noble Numismatics Sale 83 (lot 2206). Mostly extremely fine and rare. (13)

These tokens as bamboo money were used in some gambling dens, and as wooden tallies they were definitely used in the game of Chong Un Ch'au, a dice game. One of these a 200 cash-coin bamboo tallies, comes from the Guang-Shan Bank, in China in 1895.