User:Donald Trung/The Dangojeon on Wikimedia Commons (or the lack thereof)
This page 📃 serves as an essay about the presence of Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins on Wikimedia Commons and why the coverage of Korean cash coins on Wikimedia Commons is so severely lacking.
The lack of Dangojeon cash coins on Wikimedia Commons
[edit]For whatever reason there are not that many images of Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins on Wikimedia Commons, I will attempt to see the majority of the reasons behind this, but this seems to be (as far as I can tell) largely due to many external circumstances. There are not that many non-Korean websites about Korean cash coins, while the Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins alone have 5000+ (five-thousand plus) different variants, only a minuscule amount of them are actually documented on Wikimedia Commons.
This is not exclusive to Wikimedia Commons, “the study 🏫 of cash coins” outside of the Far East seems to mostly revolve around the study of Chinese cash coins and (more often than not/the former) of Chinese numismatic charms, in fact to the average non-Oriental the image of a Japanese cash coin, Korean cash coin, Ryukyuan cash coin, or a Vietnamese cash coin will evoke the thought of “a Chinese lucky coin”, in fact on Curaçao when visiting a Chinese gift shop there I asked an elderly (Dutch-)Chinese woman what the characters of a Bảo Đại Thông Bảo (保大通寶) meant and she came with a whole story of it meaning “the Summer, the Spring, the Autumn, and the Winter” without even knowing the correct character order, and when I alerted her to her illiteracy in Chinese characters, she confessed and said that “her son with his Hong Kong girlfriend did study Chinese characters”, in fact in the United States of America I met many other Han-Chinese in Chinatowns that only called them “Chinese lucky coins”, even the Japanese cash coins. Japan does have a huge cash coin collecting culture and the Japanese appreciate their monetary history generally better than the Chinese and do not treat them as “mere charms, amulets, and talismans (talismen?)” as the Chinese do. Many books have been written about these subjects and while Vietnamese cash coins are also rare to find much about outside of Vietnam, the apathy which Koreans display towards cash coins or yeopjeon is unmatched. While like with the Overseas Chinese and Overseas Vietnamese people generally experience Korean cash coins exclusively as “Chinese Universalist charms”, within South Korea the Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins do seem to hold a special place with the people.
But this doesn't necessarily translate in international coverage, I can only name two ✌🏻 (2) Non-Korean websites with lots of images of Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins, and only one, Gary Ashkenazy's (Hebrew: גארי אשכנזי) Primaltrek / Primal Trek website, has deep coverage of the subject and has been COMPLETELY imported and integrated to Wikipedia. The other is a French website written by a Frenchman whose grand-father was a Roman-Catholic missionary to Korea, and Gary Ashkenazy (Hebrew: גארי אשכנזי) himself spent a long time as a volunteer in South Korea. An appreciation of Korean cash coins only seem to develop to those who have a(n in)direct connection with Korea in some way.
I’ve uploaded a small number of images of Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins to Wikimedia Commons. And while after my global lock 🗺🔒 I said to myself “never spend money 💴 on Wikimedia again” it's not like the cash coins I purchase will “exclusively for Wikimedia”, and I’ve met plenty of people here to know that “Wikimedia isn't a monolith”, plus (+) I’m doing this all for the readers and not some “community”. The road to where we are today has been a very bumpy road with LOTS of obstacles and detours. But it’s neither my own mental health or my “Gary Ashkenazy's (Hebrew: גארי אשכנזי) Primaltrek / Primal Trek website-centric WikiCareer” that I contribute for, it's for the readers who like myself want to know more about cash coins. So I started going to auction houses again and started bidding on Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins. I said to myself while researching Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins to purchase in an auction “Hé, let’s check Gary Ashkenazy's (Hebrew: גארי אשכנזי) Primaltrek / Primal Trek website”, I opened up Ecosia, typed in “Korean Mun {Wikipedia}” and went to the English-language Wikipedia article about Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins. It’s an article family that, without my knowledge, was expanded by another user (whom I suspect was a South Korean student that didn't speak English that well but had the assignment to write an English-language Wikipedia article) with the “Dangbaekjeon” Wikipedia article. Only a decade ago the English-language internet had as good as no information about Korean cash coins, but today only SOME knowledge about Korean cash coins isn't on the English-language Wikipedia alone. Many different factors allowed for this evolution to happen.
The donation of content by people is paramount for the creation of even more content. In fact, if David Hartill didn't donate the first half (1st ½) of his book “Cast Chinese Coins” to Wikipedia, I in all probability would've still been writing exclusively about Chinese cash coins on the English-language Wikipedia now. His donation translates to years of work and the English-language Wikipedia's “Ancient Chinese coinage” article served as “a launching ground” for many Wikipedia (and elsewhere) articles afterwards. This also allowed me to write ✍🏻 about Korean cash coins on the English-language Wikipedia.
Most images of cash coins (and related subjects) in general on Wikimedia Commons, as of writing this, were uploaded here by me. And while I have been able to find plenty of examples of basically every category, sub-category, sub-sub-category, sub-sub-sub-category, Etc. For Wikimedia Commons, Korean cash coins have remained a notable exception, well, until I start buying them myself. Dr. Luke Roberts of the University of California at Santa Barbara has been extremely helpful for Wikimedia Commons in this respect. The state of Korean cash coins on Wikipedia today is somewhat comparable to that of Vietnamese cash coins on Wikimedia Commons in the year 2016 and early 2017, so before I started to contribute to it.
The Dangojeon (The 5 Mun Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins) started being produced in the year 1833, exactly two ✌🏻 (2) after the introduction of the Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins in the year 1633. And while I had been able to write ✍🏻 an English-language Wikipedia article about this subject in a couple of hours, finding images of this series hasn't proved to be as easy.
In the year 2015 it was noted in a discussion on Numista how little information there was about Korean cash coins outside of Gary Ashkenazy's (Hebrew: גארי אשכנזי) Primaltrek / Primal Trek website, a motivation which lead me to import THE ENTIRETY of that website due to the fear 😱 of one day losing that information. It is due to this motivation that I believe that Korean cash coins should be properly documented online and that “a Wikipedian mirror of Gary Ashkenazy's (Hebrew: גארי אשכנזי) Primaltrek / Primal Trek website is the only option to preserve this knowledge for other collectors”, after several setbacks and some rather huge obstacles I managed to find a wide range of many other sources to import even more information about the history from, but as long as Wikimedia Commons doesn't have that many images of Korean cash coins all I can really call Wikimedia’s coverage of Korean cash coins as “an inferior copy”, even as it contains more information now. Without proper illustration Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons cannot give the readers who want to “go into the world of Korean cash coins” the proper information that they need.
Now let's take a look at the situation in the year 2015 (which was 2 (two) years before I commenced expanding the content at the “Korean mun” article) to see what questions from a novice in this fields has now been properly answered on the English-language Wikipedia. In a post published by the Numista user “manuD” on 24-Apr-2015, 09:16 AM they wrote: “I have recently tried to identify a collection of 88 old Korean coins, with some success, thanks to the very useful primaltek.com site. Here are 3 questions that are still unanswered:” Now here this user, “manuD” from France had attempted to do their own research using only online (re)sources, because I prefer to spend money on the coins themselves and not coin catalogues this is a situation which I fully empathise with and is in fact the main motivation why I even started writing about cash coins on Wikipedia and by extend Wikimedia.
In a post published by the Numista user “manuD” on 24-Apr-2015, 09:16 AM they wrote: “1. Should I rely on the size of the coins to give them a face value? In other words, do all "1 mun" coins have a size of 23-25mm, and all "2 mun" coins a size of 28-30mm?” which he follows up with the sentence “The reason why I ask this question is that some coins seem to be "1 mun" coins, even though their size is larger.” This is actually a question ❓ which Gary Ashkenazy's (Hebrew: גארי אשכנזי) Primaltrek / Primal Trek website doesn't answer about Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins, but I did find inside of another paper that I had found online, apparently the earliest Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins did add the numbers of their denominations on their reverse sides but after a short while this stopped and the Dangijeon and Dangiljeon Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins became “weight- and size-only cash coins” as was had been the system in the Chinese Song Dynasty.
In a post published by the Numista user “manuD” on 24-Apr-2015, 09:16 AM they wrote: “2. Related question : do all "2 mun" coins have the number 2 (in chinese character, i.e. two horizontal bars) below the central hole? Some of my coins have the size of a "2 mun" coin, but no number 2.” The Dangijeon is an interesting series of Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins because their size along differentiates them from the Dangiljeon, but earlier iterations were differentiated by their reverse side inscriptions.
In a post published by the Numista user “manuD” on 24-Apr-2015, 09:16 AM they wrote: “3. Are there any rare (i.e. valuable) coins among the 88 coins of the collection?” While this may seem unrelated to Wikimedia Commons, regardless if the Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins in the Numista user “manuD’s” possession are rare or not these images all, individually, have a lot of educational value, and we should encourage people to donate images of extremely common subjects to Wikimedia Commons, in fact, I’d argue that more common subjects are “more educationally valuable” for the simple reason that people are more likely to come across the subject and will want to research it, or that people in the future 🔮 will want to have access to.
In a post published by the Numista user “manuD” on 24-Apr-2015, 09:16 AM they wrote: “If anyone could {DOUBLE SPACE 🚀} give me the KM# of some of these coins, this would sort of garantee the identification, and I would transfer them to the catalogue (I am by no means an expert).” I also used the Krause catalogue but it's only good for literally general information, in fact on many coinages Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons have more information about them than Krause Publications’ works. Specialised works are always the best works to use in these cases, in fact, for Korean cash coins Krause only gives the most basic of knowledge with many incomplete lists of mint marks and other types of marks.
In a post published by the Numista user “manuD” on 24-Apr-2015, 09:16 AM they wrote: “the personal webpage is at http://mywoodprints.free.fr/coree/ “ This page is one I’m already quite familiar with and have already requested OTRS permission for years ago and didn't get a single reply. But after some additional research the owner of the page isn't the actual author of the photographs on it so he couldn't give any OTRS permission if he wanted to.
In a Numista post written by Numista user “KennyG” which they Posted on: 1-May-2015, 02:39 AM they wrote: “1. Not size but weight, usually you will need to find the facial value on 17-18th century cash. You should be wary about facial value whenever you have a larger cash coins{.}” This is something which makes early Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins quite difficult for novice coin collectors, in fact the whole “problem” with Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins is that they are so intricate to identify. Not only do you need weight and measurements, the variations even within these are huge.
In a Numista post written by Numista user “KennyG” which they Posted on: 1-May-2015, 02:39 AM they wrote: “2. No, most Korean coins have series numbers that are irrelevant to the value. Look for 當 on later coinage (19th century){.}”. This statement is not 100% (one-hundred percent) accurate, the earliest Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins did have denominations on their backs, but later versions did not. And regarding the Chinese character, or Hanja, “當” this was used for both Dangojeon and earlier Dangbaekjeon cash coins for their denominations, this was done because the these Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins had much higher nominal values than intrinsic values, so their inscriptions were viewed as “more important” (by the Korean government) than their weights and sizes.
In a Numista post written by Numista user “KennyG” which they Posted on: 1-May-2015, 02:39 AM they wrote: “3. Yes all Korean cash are rare, they are the least common and most diverse among the cash-issuing countries (China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea){.}” I actually couldn't find any sources that back this claim up, however, I’ve also heard several contradicting statements to this. But this statement could explain why images of Korean cash coins are much, much more hard to come about on the internet than any other cash coins, maybe only slightly less scarce than Ryukyuan cash coins.
In a Numista post written by Numista user “KennyG” which they Posted on: 1-May-2015, 02:39 AM they wrote: “David Hartill released a catalogue that lists all Korean cash and all varieties, and I have been looking to buy it and list all coins on Numista, yet I lack the money to buy it ($40+shipping). I was looking to ask Numista for help getting the book, since it is for the greater good of the website, but I do not want to ask for much.” This is an issue I also face, while I’ve spent 100’s (hundreds) of Euro’s (€) on Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins, while many cheaper Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins in my collection cost as low as € 2,- (two ✌🏻 Euro’s) and less, though obviously many of these are of the most common mints, but many different mint marks and other marks are in my collection, well... Not many, a few, in fact most of my cash coins aren’t Korean. As coin collecting catalogues have existed for many centuries I should probably look for many old Japanese cash coin catalogues to import Korean cash coin mint marks from.
In a post written by the Numista user “manuD” published on 1-May-2015, 09:18 AM they wrote: “Quote: manuD “Thank you for this very useful answer.”.”. While I saw this answer, it’s not something I can completely stand behind for the simple reason that online many variants of Korean cash coins aren’t properly documented as of yet. To this I think that the Bank of Korea needs to be contacted.
In a post written by the Numista user “manuD” published on 1-May-2015, 09:18 AM they wrote: “1. If weight rather than size counts, then does that mean that the size-facialvalue relation given by primaltrek.com is incorrect, or suffers exceptions? Perhaps for older coins? Why should I be weary of large coins ? Do you mean 40mm? do you mean that larger coins have more chances of being fake?” This question that was written by the Numista user “manuD” is surprisingly on point, some of the information that they were looking for I could find on other coinage sites and the earliest Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins did have denominations on their backs, but later versions did not. The size of Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins is paramount to differentiate between denominations of Dangiljeon (1 Mun) cash coins and Dangijeon (2 Mun) cash coins, but concerning the Dangbaekjeon (100 Mun) cash coins and the Dangojeon (5 Mun) cash coins the denominations were actually expressed with Chinese characters (or Hanja) instead of their weight or the diameter.
In a post written by the Numista user “manuD” published on 1-May-2015, 09:18 AM they wrote: “2. the only coins with that character in my collection are the 5 mun coins, so I have to rely on weight for the others.” This actually means that the Numista user “manuD” doesn't have any Dangbaekjeon (100 Mun) cash coins. As I had purchased this Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coin, it actually is represented on Wikimedia Commons now, in fact it has its own category now.
In the Numista user “KennyG” their post of 1-May-2015, 09:18 AM they wrote about the sourcing regarding Korean cash coins. This is written before I had greatly expanded Wikipedia's coverage of Korean cash coins, and later Wikimedia Commons’ coverage of Korean cash coins so at the time Wikimedia was “pretty useless”.
In the Numista user “KennyG” their post of 1-May-2015, 09:18 AM they wrote: “Primaltrek is good for understanding the basics, one of the few websites that even discusses Korean cash coinage. Hartill will be the only source, however, with accurate dates and all varieties.” This shows two ✌🏻 (2) things, one (1) is the fact that very few websites even cover Korean cash coins, and 2 (two) the fact that at the moment the book 📚 written by Wybrand Op den Velde & David Hartill is truly the only non-Korean standard work in this respect. Personally I also hope 🤞🏻 that many new websites will try to expand on the work I’ve Already made on Wikimedia on Korean cash coinage.
In the Numista user “KennyG” their post of 1-May-2015, 09:18 AM they wrote: “1. Usually weight goes along with size, so you should expect to see larger coins being of higher facial value. Larger coins do not have chances of being fake, what I am saying is that larger coins tend to have a higher facial value. Newer 19th century cash are much smaller than the earlier cash.” This actually only applies to the Dangojeon (5 Mun) cash coins as the Dangbaekjeon (100 Mun) cash coins are way bigger than any other series of Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins. It’s a simple fact that the Dangbaekjeon (100 Mun) cash coins caused the biggest inflation, the Dangojeon (5 Mun) cash coins also caused a lot of inflation which made the monetary reforms quite unpopular and is one of the reasons why these larger denominations of Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins are quite rare (thus expensive) today.
In the Numista user “KennyG” their post of 1-May-2015, 09:18 AM they wrote: “2. You will see higher values more often in later issues, so yes you will have to rely on weight and/or size.” This actually only applies to higher denominations of the Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins, but both Dangiljeon (1 Mun) cash coins and Dangijeon (2 Mun) cash coins were produced for an extremely long period of time.
And regarding this book, Wybrand Op den Velde and David Hartill used an incorrect transcription of the McCune-Reischauer romanisation of the Korean language and this was later imported to Gary Ashkenazy's (Hebrew: גארי אשכנזי) Primaltrek / Primal Trek website which was later imported to the English-language Wikipedia and following a large re-organisation of the list where Chosŏn'gŭl was added to the list of 52 (fifty-two) government mint marks on Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins by me, this was later imported to the Korean-language Wikipedia where the correct reading does exist in Chosŏn'gŭl, but not in Latin script. I’d say that Op den Velde & David Hartill's coverage of Korean cash coins and Korean numismatic charms is better than Wikimedia at the moment because they have a wealth of images and as Gary Ashkenazy's (Hebrew: גארי אשכנזי) Primaltrek’s / Primal Trek’s page on Korean coins can be described as “an inferior copy”, Wikimedia's coverage on these subjects is “an inferior copy of an inferior copy”, to fix this a lot would have to be done.
One of the major areas in which work is required still is information, while I’d say that Korean cash coins in 2019 on Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia are “in the same position as Chinese cash coins on the English-language Wikipedia in 2016”, but as Korean cash coins are much more recent and were abolished earlier this position is quite a good one to be in, Wikipedia was blessed with David Hartill donating the first 🥇 half (1st ½) of his book “Cast Chinese Coins” to Wikipedia, but I had to “fill in the blanks”, which I did. But as the title of this page 📃 suggests how this could all be explored and expanded upon can be demonstrated with only a single series of Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins, the Dangojeon.
For comparison’s sake let's compare it with the cash coinage of the Manchu Qing Dynasty because they were introduced around the same era, both feature an extensively complicated system of mint marks, both introduced high denomination cash coins around the same years due to high government expenditures (the Daqian of the Qing Vs. The Dangbaekjeon & Dangojeon of Joseon), and both had experimented with machine-struck coinages around the same time. In fact the similarities between the different cash coinage systems of China, Japan, Korea, the Ryukyu islands, and Vietnam are all extremely similar. But even more so between these systems.
The English-language Wikipedia article on the “Dangojeon” cash coins should be expanded in a method similar as the Manchu Qing Dynasty's cash coinages, currently all mint marks and other reverse inscriptions used during the reign of the Manchu Qing Dynasty are listed in the article “Qing Dynasty coinage”, as of writing ✍🏻 this (25 D. 10 M. 2019 A.) there are English-language Wikipedia articles on the individual inscriptions “Kangxi Tongbao” and the “Qianlong Tongbao”, each of these contains an overview of mint marks that were used on the reverse sides of the specific Manchu Qing Dynasty coinages, though this actually was the most complex during the Shunzhi period as all different mint mark types were being experimented with, but all of these are already on the “Qing Dynasty coinage” article, and the Xianfeng coinages which includes a plethora of denominations with each denomination and/or obverse inscription (Tongbao, Zhongbao, and Yuanbao) having their own respective mint marks.
A similar system should be added to the English-language Wikipedia articles on the various series of Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins, but because they all share the same obverse inscriptions these articles should be about their denominations, and on Wikimedia Commons they should be organised in many more ways depending on the theme of the Chinese characters (Hanja) and/or the other symbols present on them. To demonstrate this all Dangojeon cash coins should be further sub-divided based on mint and based on any additional characters and all overlap should be placed into even more intricate layers of sub-category after sub-category, not too different from how Chinese numismatic charms are organised on Wikimedia Commons and Chinese banknotes. As there are over 5000 different varieties of Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins this organisation should be done to accommodate as much different variants based on their “families”, the English-language Wikipedia articles should reflect this. For example the article on Dangojeon Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins should include a table (list 📃) for every possible mint mark present on that denomination and all known variants of other reverse marks. But for all of this to be able to happen a lot more work has got to be done...
Original publication 📤
[edit]Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:09, 27 October 2019 (UTC) (Original Microsoft Outlook e-mail 📧 draft title for future 🔮 reference “Dangojeon20. ”.).
"An inferior copy of an inferior copy"
[edit]The current state of Korean cash coins on the English-language Wikipedia and Wikimedia websites in general can best be described as "An inferior copy of an inferior copy", this is because Wybrand Op den Velde & David Hartill’s 2013 work Cast Korean coins and charms is the best non-Oriental book 📖 on the topic of Korean cash coins. The CoinTalk.com member AnYangMan, who is a Well-Known Member wrote: ”You only have one real option in this case; Wybrand op den Velde & David Hartill’s 2013 work Cast Korean coins and charms. An amazing book, Hartill did the Charms, Op den Velde did the cast coins. It covers everything from ancient times, up until the last Sang Pyong Tong Bo’s, including some of the latest developments the field of Korean numismatics (it was published in 2013).” (Cited from: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/korean-cash.303807/). All pre-Japanese Korean coinages are covered on Wikimedia, but not all pre-colonial era Korean coinages have images are represented on Wikimedia Commons, this also means that for a long time even if all information ℹ from this work is imported, the lack of available images will mean that Wikimedia would remain "An inferior copy of an inferior copy".
The CoinTalk.com member AnYangMan, who is a Well-Known Member wrote: ”The only other option you have is Mandel, but his work is a little outdated, and it lacks a couple of newly discovered Sang Pyong Tong Bo varieties. Still a great book, specifically if you only want to attribute only a couple of common varieties.” (Cited from: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/korean-cash.303807/). This is also a major issue which I have personally run into. Only a few non-Orientals seem to write ✍🏻 almost all of the books 📚 on Asian cash coins and Asian numismatic charms. This also means that the only options are not only far and few in number, it would probably be best to seek more experts in this field to donate their works to Wikimedia.
The CoinTalk.com member AnYangMan, who is a Well-Known Member wrote: ”But I’d go with Hartill/Op den Velde, to be honest. Also, a great website, partly based on Mandel, is http://primaltrek.com/koreancoins.html, lots of information, but it doesn’t have an overview of which furnaces were in use in what mint, in what year, etc.” (Cited from: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/korean-cash.303807/). As Wikimedia's content on Korean cash coins largely stems from these sources which further means that Wikimedia's coverage of Korean cash coins being "An inferior copy of an inferior copy", but this doesn't mean that this state has to be permanent. It’s probably best to try to contact the Bank of Korea (BoK) to donate their images to Wikimedia Commons and help make the coverage of Korean cash coins better. In my personal case it’s not that I have anything against Wybrand Op den Velde & David Hartill’s 2013 work Cast Korean coins and charms, in fact its € 50,- price tag is very well justified, but for novice collectors who are just beginning to look into Korean cash coins I believe that making this knowledge freely accessible for everyone.
Personally I prefer for knowledge to not only be free of charge but also free to share and I hope 🤞🏻 to one day make all information on Sangpyeong Tongbo cash coins freely available on Wikimedia.
Original publication 📤 (of "An inferior copy of an inferior copy")
[edit]Get Outlook for Android. 📲 Sent from my Elephone P8 Mini with Google Android. 📲
Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:10, 27 October 2019 (UTC) (Original Microsoft Outlook e-mail 📧 draft title for future 🔮 reference “Addendum3. ”.).