During China's long march (towards communism), the Red Army marched from one end of China heading towards north. Coins were supposedly struck by a portable mint - all equipment were carried and struck by soldiers. A fair number of their coins were struck weakly. As for survival rates - it's hard to speculate but you can only imagine how much were melted down during the Great Leap Forward. Some copper coins were restruck supposedly in the 1960s. I have no proper information to verify this.
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This is a rather unusual coin. I don't quite remember where I obtained it. I haven't found a catalog that mentions this and many thought that this is a "fantasy" coin. That said, a collector has expressed his thoughts on this.
Who knows, it may be genuine or it may be a fantasy. Whatever it is, it does not hurt to preserve it.
This particular coin has proven to be difficult. While a fair amount of verdigris has been removed, some just got too far inside the coin. This has gone through four cycles of Verdicare but I decided to stop it there as the patina seemed to be too delicate to mess around with. Obviously avoid a problem coin like this but if it happened to be uncommon, it's hard to to reject it outright.
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A restruck coins supposedly made in 1960s. Some random verdigris spots which Verdicare has successfully removed them. There are spots where the verdigris previously was.
10 March 2015