Anti-Communist Student Freedom Dollar

December 2024

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Anti-Communist Student Freedom Dollar. See below for historical details. The host coin in this instance is a 1910 British Trade Dollar that had several chops before being powerfully overstruck on both sides. Obverse is in Chinese with presumably the same legend as the
English reverse: 'CHINA FREEDOM DOLLAR - SUPPORT THE FEDERATION - SAVE THE STUDENTS'

After the Tian An Men Square massacre in Beijing an organization was formed to assist Chinese exchange students who were stranded in the United States where they had been studying. One of the devices they used to raise money was to counterstamp a few hundred old Chinese Silver Dollars and other silver dollars that circulated in mainland China at the same time as the Chinese silver dragon dollars and sell them at a premium. The dollar sized silver that circulated in China at the same time as dragon dollars were mostly U.S. trade dollars, British trade dollars, French Indo-China silver piastres, and Mexican 8 reales. These foreign coins, that were accepted in China as good silver trade coinage, were not as prevalent as dragon dollars, so they are actually scarcer. In the center of the counterstamp was an anti-Communist logo and circling that the name of the group. On one side of the coin the lettering was in Chinese and on the other side of the coin the lettering was in English. With only about 200 of these silver coins in existence, these are quite scarce, and historically very interesting.
In the mean time I have been able to plus up the museum with three of the four known host coin types (there may be more) with these counterstamps. See my "others" section under 'Asia & Middle East' at: [ link ]