Daily Used Uninscribed Sycee

Stephen Tai
Apr.10, 1998

	Dish Silver Diameter: 60 mm Weight: 99 g (2 taels and 8 maces)
	Hen’s Nest Silver Dimension: 29 (L) x 14 (W) mm Weight: 40 g (1 taels and 1 maces)
	Mirror-like Silver Dimension: 32 (L) x 27 (W) mm Weight: 69 g (1 taels and 9 maces)
	Pumpkin Seed Silver Left: 21 (L) x 12 (W) mm, Weight: 10g ( 2.7 maces) Middle: 22 (L) x 10 (W) mm, Weight: 4g (1 mace) Right: 19 (L) x 11 (W) mm, Weight: 7g (2 maces)
	Xiao Yuan Bao [Small Yuan Bao] Dimensions: 40 (L) x 23 (W) mm Weight: 37g (1 Tael)

Silver had been one of the major currencies in China for a very long time, especially since the middle of Ming dynasty, till 1933. Owing to silver was too valuable for the average people to use it in their daily life, most of the people at that time used cash coins instead.
Even in the case of using silver, sycee weighed for less than 5 taels were more commonly seen. It was because too few people could afford using a silver bigger than that amount.
Chinese used to call sycee weighed less than 5 taels as Sui Yin Ze (broken silver). Those sycee usually were of different shapes, and because of being small, many of them their shapes were not regular.
The purity of those small sycee were also varied from one to another, it means that everytime when used them, people would have to measure their weight and purity for valuation.
Most of those sycee were uninscribed, for the general people were able to use them without any inscription. However, now it causes us trouble in finding the origins where they were cast.
The above sycee, people also gave them their names mostly on what they looks like, such as dish, hen’s nest, pumpkin seedľ…