Tiger is in the third place among Chinese zodiac which is compared to “寅” (the third of the twelve earthly branches)”. There is “寅” in the inscriptions on bones, just like a fierce tiger oncoming. Tiger is of course one of the indispensable theme design on the Chinese zodiac in all the past dynasties. Nowadays, there are handed-down single set of Chinese zodiac tiger coins with a tiger design on the front side, and “寅” or “寅生”, the seal character, the pattern of “ben ming xing guan” or the “yi qian (coin of that time)” Chinese zodiac coins including tigers design on the back side. There are many kinds of the Chinese zodiac tiger coins which are too numerous to mention individually.

“ Long live Da mei” Chinese Zodiac Tiger Coin of Qing Dynasty

In addition to the Chinese zodiac coins, the tiger designed current coins seldom appeared in all the past dynasties. In the year of “Zhizheng” (the last reign title of Yuan Dynasty) in the reign of Emperor Shun, there were Zhizheng tongbao coins. The front side reads “至正通宝”, and the back side reads “寅” in phagspa Mongolian, which is used to memorize the year.

The most famous and precious Chinese zodiac tiger current coin with the character “寅” is the birth time coin“康熙通宝”with the character “寅” on the back side cast by “宝福” mint in Fu Jian province in the reign of Emperor Kang Xi of the Qing Dynasty. Because it was the sixtieth birthday of the Emperor Kang Xi in March 1713, the mint in Fu Jian province, in its unique way, cast and issued a kind of birth time coin so as to give this coin to Kang Xi as a present. This kind of birth time coin is the same with other common ones with four characters “康熙通宝” on the front side, however, on the back side, besides the character “福” in Manchu language and Chinese, this coin adds a twelve Earthly Branches character on the top of the hole. It was the year of snake in 1713, so on the first birth time coin, there was a character “巳”---the sixth of the twelve Earth Branches which the ancients used to denote years, months, or days in combination with the ten Heavenly Stems. From then on, when the birthday of Kang Xi comes, the third month of each year, Fu Bao mint will cast a kind of birth time coin with the Chinese zodiac character on the back, such as the character “寅” in the year of tiger, etc. There are totally ten kinds of this coin until the death of the Emperor Kang Xi in the year of 1722, so the distribution and its finding until now are rare.

Chinese Zodiac Tiger Coin of Song Dynasty