White Copper Mountain Ghost Coin Charm

A charm coin is not money for spending but something cast to be handled, hung, or kept at the bottom of a box. They go back to the Han and peaked in the Qing, when even the palace ran a furnace. The mountain-ghost charm is one branch of them, out of Daoist talisman coinage, tied to the old practice of warding off evil and with nothing to do with the coppers you buy things with. Older generations sewed one to the brim of a child’s hat or tied it to a door ring. On old pieces the hole was usually drilled afterwards and the wall carries a spiral; on a new cast the hole is cast and the wall is smooth.

The face of a mountain-ghost charm is a ring of incantation, the length varying; the common version opens with “mountain ghost, thunder” and goes on through cutting down ghosts and subduing spirits to keeping the person at peace. The back is usually bagua or a thunder pattern, sometimes the seven stars with a turtle and snake. Types differ widely — the cutting, the square hole, the rim each have their own rules — and collectors read the type while wearers only want it to look right. The text runs from the twenties into the forties in character count: more characters pack tight, fewer leave white space.

A coin made into a hanging charm and one made for a collection are not the same brief. The collector looks at type, at patina, at whether it has been retouched; a hanging charm depends on whether the rim runs smooth and the hole sits true — off by a fraction and it hangs crooked, and no adjustment fixes it. Some pieces are cast with the hole deliberately high so they hang straight: asymmetric to look at, right on the body. Thickness matters too. Too thin and it swings like nothing, too thick and it presses the clothes and drags the neckline out of shape.

White copper runs paler than a bronze coin and never takes that green crust. When it needs cleaning, toothpaste and an old toothbrush worked along the strokes, then rinse and dry. Do not acid-dip it: the surface goes grey and no amount of handling brings it back. Hung on a bag, keep it away from keys, whose teeth will wear the cutting flat; two metal pieces on one ring and the side that knocks gets scarred first. Left alone, white copper goes a little yellow. That is not rust, it does not wipe off, and it does not need to.

This kind of piece is a supporting player among curios, not the lead. Strung at the side of a bracelet as a counterweight, or hung alone in a car, it works better than worn front and centre. When a customer asks whether it is an old coin, saying plainly that it is a new cast in white copper makes the conversation easier — a real old coin would not be at this price, and would not be this uniform. Buy it as a pattern to look at rather than as an antique and you will sleep better. Some people use one as a bookmark, pressed into an old book: more interesting than hanging it, and nothing to knock against.