Single-Stamp Silver Ingots of Yunnan

Stephen Tai
Feb.19, 1998

In addition to saddle sycee (Pai Fang Dings), there were other typical silver ingots circulated in Yunnan during Ching Dynasty, and most of them were in square or rectangular bases. According to the number of chops silver ingots were stricken, they may be classified as Single-Stamp, Double-Stamp, and Triple-Stamp, 3 kind of silver ingots. Saddle sycee may also be considered as one of the Triple-Stamp.
The Single-Stamp silver ingots in Yunnan existed varieties, their weights may be ranging from few maces (10-20g) to 10 taels (about 380g), some of them were deeply grooved by chop striking, some were merely stamped.

Inscriptions of the One-Stamp silver ingots were also varying from one to another, we may further classify them into 4 major types, by their inscriptions regarding

casting year, such as:

Left: The 14^th year of Tao Kuang Period. (1834, 1821-1850)
Dimension: 31x31 mm
Weight: 100g (2.7 taels)
Right: The 1^st year of Hsien Feng Period. (1851, 1851-1861)
Dimension: 38x39 mm
Weight: 150g (4 tales)

casting place, such as:

Da Li Prefecture
Dimension: 31x32 mm
Weight: 80 g (2.2 taels)

name of silverware or silversmith, such as

Left: [Silversmith] Peng Heng Chang
Dimension: 32x33 mm
Weight: 90 g (2.5 taels)
Middle: [Silversmith] Ju Chuang
Dimension: 22x28 mm
Weight: 28 g (0.8 tael)
Right: [Silversmith] Jiang Soon
Dimension: 27x28 mm
Weight: 36 g (1 tael)

(4) publicly agreed fine silver, such as:

Bao Tai Bank's Publicly Agreed [Fine Silver]
Dimension: 28x30 mm
Weight: 108 g (3 tael)

Types (1), (2) might be kinds of tax silver for local governments, who assigned a silverware or silversmith to cast such silver. It had been a ruling in Ching Dynasty that some of the tax silver as collected by the local governments was allowed to be reserved for their overheads and expenditures. Those tax silver in reserve were not necessary to be cast, in a manner, bound by regular shape, weight, or inscriptions with detailed information as other ration silver did. Even though those silver only have simple inscriptions, and no silversmith's name was attached, however, officials were used to deal with selective silversmiths or silverware, or even hire one to serve in the offices, should what might happen, they always knew whom to be held responsible for the consequence.
Type (3) only inscribed with silversmith's or silverware's names/brands, should be for the purpose of civil use only. Silversmiths or silverware in the past were used to render guarantees to their customers by stamping their names/brands onto the silver they cast.
Type (4) was cast in the early year of Kuang Hsu Period, before saddle sycee being created. The public agreed fine silver, means the merchants had reach into an agreement for a standard purity of 98%, with which every silver currency had to comply. The people adopted such concept later when started making saddle sycee.
Apart from the above 4 types of Single-Stamp silver ingots, a few in or combined with different legends may also be found.

A Silver Sycee Review