Enormous Ban Liang Fantasy from the Lockhart Collection

CNG 96, Lot: 1086. Estimate $150. Sold for $120. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CHINA, Qín dynasty. 221-206 BC. Fantasy Æ Ban Liang (44mm, 50.86 g). Cast 19th century AD or earlier. Ban Liang in early zhuànshū Hànzì (seal script) characters / Blank. BN Chinoises I –; Hartill –; Lockhart 103 (this coin). VF, brown patina. Rare – valued at $100 by Bruce Smith in the 1975 Quarterman reprint of Lockheart’s collection.

From the J.P. Righetti Collection. Ex Spink-Taisei 7 (2 July 1989), lot 554 (part of); James H. Stewart Lockhart Collection, no. 103.

This important pedigreed piece illustrates how difficult collecting Chinese coins was for a Westerner during the late 19th century. When the catalog of Lockhart’s collection was published in 1915, a mere three years after the final castings of Chinese cash, the only available English texts on the series were a handful of articles, the catalog of the Glover Collection, and the important British Musuem catalog. With such scant scholarship, many fakes and fantasies like the present piece slipped through the cracks into Western collections.