For many years there was only one book devoted solely to the numismatic area of chopmarks, Frank M. Rose’s Chopmarks. First published in 1987 and reprinted in 2001, it was the‘Bible’for chopmark coin collectors. At a slim 54 pages Chopmarks gives the theories and observations of Frank Rose, the godfather of chopmark collectors, in a breezy tone. The book includes extensive photos of Mr. Rose’s collection making the coins in the book highly sought-after by collectors.
Chopmarks was the first and for a long time the only book on the subject, and although the book demands praise for doing something no one else had attempted, it does suffer from several drawbacks. The photos are generally of a low quality, sometimes only showing a part of the coin or just one side. The text, having being written in the mid-1980s in the pre-Deng Xiaoping period when China was still firmly closed to Westerners, lacks newer information. Despite these flaws, Chopmarks remains a musthave for collectors.
For many years, the only other source of chopmark information was The Chopmark News. Readers know that it is the newsletter of the Chopmark Collectors Club (CCC), which was founded in 1990, two years before Mr. Rose’s passing. The goal was to have a place for collectors to share information. This included recent sales, collector’s comments, previously published research and analysis on the chops. The newsletter was born in July 1990 with Mr. Everett Jones serving as club founder, newsletter editor and chief writer. The Chopmark News, which started with a modest 4-page issue, has grown into a publication which has published over 2,000 pages of information. Jones has since passed away, but his work, often underappreciated, was done in the pre-internet era on a simple typewriter, a fact that still amazes me.
When I became interested in chopmarked coins I had the fortune to come into contact with Mr. Michael Chou, purchaser of the Rose estate. Michael sold me some coins and we have become close friends. My first Rose coin purchased from Michael Chou was in October 2008 and a few years later Michael Chou encouraged me to take over as editor of the newsletter. He funded me $500 and I took over for then-editor Rich Licato.
Michael Chou also encouraged me to write an updated ‘Rose’ book. Mr. Chou took the total costs of the book upon himself spending over $10,000 on the photography alone. A sum, along with printing, typesetting, etc. that would never be recouped. The book was published in 2014, being only the second to focus on chopmarked coins.
Our idea was to update Rose, particularly the pictures, as well as the newest information known at the time. My idea was not just to do Chopmarks with better pictures, I decided a new approach was needed to make the book different from Rose’s. Rose organized the book in geographical areas describing the coins in his collection. I decided to organize it chronological, listing the oldest known chopmarked coins - which were cobs, to the newest – Chinese Republican dollars. For many years only these two books dealt with the subject.
Suddenly, ten years later, three more books have been released one the subject. Two are devoted to specific collections and one is a more serious research work. Let’s look at all three.
The two collection-focused books deal with two important chopmarked collections, the J.D. Bowman collection, and the Ed Murphy collection.
J.D. Bowman was a collector and frequent contributor to the early issues of the Chopmark News. Little is known of him except he had amassed a substantial and quality chopmarked coin collection. The book, The Catalog of The J.D. Bowman Collection of Chopmarked Coins was released in October 2024 and was written and researched by Taylor Leverage and mostly photographed by Dan Huntsinger [in addition to archive photos from major auction houses like Stack’s Bowers]. Taylor has carefully dug up all of Mr. Bowman’s previous writings, compiled an inventory of his collection (70 pages!), and located some of the Bowman 2X2 flips with his distinctive style of writing. Dan Huntsinger has provided over 30 pages of high quality photos of some of Mr. Bowman’s best coins. It’s an excellent book that would have made J.D. Bowman very proud.
The second ‘collection’ book is The Catalog of The Ed Murphy Collection of Chopmarked Coins. This was released in September 2023, one year before the release of the Bowman book. Mr. Murphy (better known as ‘Ed’) probably has the finest collection of chopmarked coins existent. Ed build the collection while living in the Philippines in the 1990s-2000s. He was also a big buyer of many of J.D. Bowman’s better coins. The text is minimal [3 pages in total] and was written by Taylor Leverage. It’s mainly an introduction to Ed’s life and a summary of chopmarks. However,what makes this book a mustown is the photography. Done by Dan Huntsinger, Ed shipped his collection, box by box, across the United States for Dan to photograph. The best of his collection appears in large high resolution photos. The collection, which covers 260 pages with 2 coins per page (520 coins in total), is certainly among the best ever assembled.
The final of the three books put together by the team of Taylor Leverage and Dan Huntsinger is the finely researched By Weight, Not By Coyne – An Introduction to Chopmarked Coins. Taylor has written a 270-page masterpiece covering the history of silver in China followed by a list of crown-sized chopmarked coins alphabetically listed by country of the host coin. Each country’s history of the period is described as well as the assorted coins that made it to China. Many of the finest examples are shown as well as the pedigree. There is also a section on minor coinage, counterfeits [contemporary and modern], chop types, non-chops, as well as market information, a reading list and an extensive bibliography. It’s an absolutely superb book and if you are going to buy just one of the three this is the one you should buy.
I am looking forward to additional books and upgrades of existing books in the coming years. The amount of information on chopmarks is growing daily.
All three are available on Amazon in the print-by-demand form.
