Tour the Shanghai Mint With Fred Weinberg

Leading error coin expert and dealer Fred Weinberg saw my recent coverage of the Chinese Counterfeiting Ring, and offered some photos of his own tour of a Chinese Mint - the Chinese official government mint at Shanghai! The Chinese, who are well-known for copying and counterfeiting the goods of Western society, aren't just known in the numismatic community for their counterfeits and replicas of coins. They actually copied the entire facade of the U.S. Mint at Philadelphia for their own Shanghai Mint building!

In addition to the photos showing the Chinese copy of the old Philadelphia Mint facade, (and the explanation the Chinese gave as to why they copied the Philadelphia Mint building back in the 1920's,) Fred's photo gallery tour of the Shanghai Mint includes the original galvano for the 1983 Silver Panda and some very rarely-seen planchet strip made out of solid gold, from which the coin blanks for the 1983 Gold Pandas were punched!

Fred loaned me his entire photo album from this 1983 Shanghai Mint tour when I saw him at the Central States Numismatic Society coin show over the weekend, so I'll be adding more photos to this fascinating gallery all week. In the meantime, can you guess whether the photo shown here is the old U.S. Mint building at Philadelphia, or the Chinese replica of the building?

Chinese Mint and Related Links

• Tour the Shanghai Mint With Fred Weinberg
• Profile of Fred Weinberg
• Inside a Chinese coin Counterfeiting Mint

Photo courtesy of HABS/HAER.