Asian Coins

Asian coins carry scripts, calendars, and design traditions that developed independently of the European minting conventions most Western collectors know. Japanese coins date themselves by imperial era. Chinese cash coins circulated for over two thousand years in a form that would have been unrecognizable to a Roman mint worker. Southeast Asian nations inherited colonial currencies and remade them into symbols of sovereignty within a generation.
 
The coins in this collection cross the breadth of the continent — from the island economies of the Pacific Rim to the ancient minting traditions of the mainland. They include coins struck under colonial authority and coins struck to replace colonial authority, denominations that survived independence and denominations that were abolished the day the flag changed.
 
What unites them is range. No other continent spans as many languages on its coinage, as many calendar systems, or as many centuries of continuous minting tradition.