Miracle Enjoyment Chinese Coins

[Todd Lassen]

I just received my first batch of these coins and I'm very excited about the quality of the coins and the possibilities that I have with them. I will have a full description and some of the available options on my website soon, in the meantime I have put an auction on ebay to help get the word out. I hope you can have a look and possibly suggest any other aspects or qualities you may be looking for.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... otohosting

Thanks and a happy holiday season to all! Cheers.

[Guest]

The coins look gorgeous.

Will they be available in thinner versions? Would they feel too light if they were made half the thickness of a normal one?

How would you describe their color? They look like brass in the photos, but are they dark or light? Are they light enough to be called "golden"?

Is it possible to get a set with polished reliefs and black enameled backgrounds?

[Todd Lassen]

Hi Craig. That's a good question about the thickness of the coins. It may be possible to stamp them from thinner stock. I will follow up on that, I could have a batch of palming coins stamped. My only concern would be that I specifically had the dies made to have a very nice clean and deep relief on the coin. I don't know if you would have to sacrifice some of that with a thinner coin. The coins could always be made any thickness if I make one coin from 2, in the event that only a few are required. I had the coins made to the exact thickness of a silver dollar, so half of that would still have some pretty good heft to it...at least enough where the coins wouldn't sound tinny when clinked together.

I went the fairly standard route of paying to have the dies made. I now own the dies and pay to have the coins stamped out. I pay more per coin to have them stamped with the mirror finish. This requires much more fussing around. When I make a large run of the enamelled coins, the dies will be scuffed a bit for a matte finish. And then when I go back to the mirror finish, the dies will have to be polished again. So I intend to make decent size batches of each variety to cut down on labor.

To answer your question about the polished relief. Yes, this is possible too. When I started making products with the nice tortoise shell and ivory, etc., I bought a large variety of buffs and polishing compounds to polish the cast polyesters. Well, I found that these will also put a mirror shine on coins in a few minutes. So all I would need to do is buff the coins before sending them to be enamelled. This way the characters and borders would be brilliant in contrast with the black enamel.

These are a very rich brass color. I would say yellow, but it may depend on the lighting, in a cigar box they look almost a real gold color.

[Guest]

Thanks. Thin palming coins would be great for CCC or routines requiring you to hold out thick stacks of coins in fingerpalm and edge grip.

Will there be a variety of enamel colors? Red would go perfectly with a polished golden finish. Beauty and cultural significance...I like that synergy.

[Todd Lassen]

Sorry to say, the real thin coins is a no-go. I was told I could reduce to about .080, that is the thickness of a half dollar. I don't know if that would be worthwhile. You'd have dollar size coins the thickness of half dollars.

The coins can be enamelled any color without much trouble. And yes, my Asian friends think the red and gold coins would be great.

[MitchSchneiter]

The coins look great Todd. I will be picking up some of these for sure.

[Todd Lassen]

Hey Mitch, thanks for that. You are one heck-uva good customer. :)

If you have a look at the auction, please also have a look at my other auctions. I cleaned out all the stuff I had lying around here and put up another 18 auctions yesterday. There's some oddball stuff and some really nice standard items. This will all go to pay off a small portion of the expenses I racked up this summer. As some of you know, I was laid up for a while, but feeling fairly cantankerous now. Thanks.