Page 68 - Chinese SIlver By Adrien Von Ferscht

authenticity and worth and, in doing so, that mark became a way for merchants to
advertise, as seen in the following illustration.

All transactions of any kind in China required a “chop mark” and in fact still do today. Deals
struck between the Chinese Hong merchants and the foreign merchants often included
that an insistence of “first chop” silver as payment.

When a trade dollar reaching Canton was accepted by a Hong merchant as being full
value, the merchant or the “shroff” acting on his behalf would “chop” the coin by stamping
his unique Chinese character seal on it. As a coin changed hands from one merchant to
another, it could receive a number of different chops from the various merchants. Wily as
the Chinese merchants were, they quickly came of the opinion that “chops” gradually
reduced the actual silver content of the coin - first chop, therefore, was the highest silver
content coin available to them that had passed muster.

The Spanish-Mexican dollar [aka “pieces of eight”] was considered the most preferred
payment by the Hong merchants, so it was not uncommon for a sale to be agreed on the
basis of “first chop Spanish dollar” [see below].