Talk:Great Ming Treasure Note

John E. Sandrock

@Countakeshi:, I saw that you removed large parts of the article because it used John E. Sandrock who depended on the Ch'uan Pu T'ung Chih, however, the sentences "Under the Ming dynasty after paper money started suffering from depreciation it did not enjoy a favoured status among the government officials and those found counterfeiting Da Ming Baochao banknotes were penalised in more lenient ways. Those found guilty were often only fined. The wording on the banknotes themselves regarding the punishment of those practicing the misdemeanor of counterfeiting also changed to reflect this attitude as one series of the Da Ming Baochao had a warning written on them that only those who truly counterfeited banknotes shall be persecuted while those who were only accomplices and would confess to being miscreants shall be granted amnesty." and "The most common form of counterfeiting paper money during the Ming dynasty printing Da Ming Baochao banknotes from counterfeit printing plates or blocks, while another type of counterfeiting was "pasting" where banknotes were pasted together using small pieces of other banknotes by for example illegally raising the value of a 1 guàn banknote to 10 guàn. The latter of these types was also less severely penalised." as far as I can tell did not come from this source, and excluding the Luohan part of the "Surviving specimens" the information for the recovery of Ming banknotes were from other more modern sources.

I don't have any objection to the removal of unreliable content, but to what extend is the more modern information equally unreliable? --Donald Trung (talk) 18:01, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Do you mean it did not come from Sandrock or that it did not come from the Ch'uan Pu T'ung Chih? It's on page 11 of Sandrock's monograph. Warnings on banknotes have been around since the Song and Jin dynasties. The "pasting" forgery is mentioned by Yang Lien-sheng on page 66 of his "Money and Credit in China" but does not say if it was the most common form. The vast majority of surviving Ming 1 guan notes comes from the two hoards as Sandrock described on page 6 however I would look for other sources to cite. Citing Sandrock's monograph could deceive readers into thinking all of it is solid which may lead it to being used in other articles, papers, etc.--Countakeshi (talk) 03:48, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

@Countakeshi:, a small monograph with a note indicating that the source largely relies on an unreliable source. This is specifically about the extant specimens, as banknotes from this era are generally rare which would make those that still exist today quite notable. --Donald Trung (talk) 21:25, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: Best practice is to find other sources. Sandrock provided one source in his paper: The trade and administration of China.--Countakeshi (talk) 04:58, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

@Countakeshi:, still, leaving most of the text intact and just adding the "better source needed" template would in most cases suffice, especially if the information isn't factually incorrect, restoring the same text but with another source seems counterproductive. I think that the readers doing research into this subject would benefit more from having the information included than excluded, but texts like "the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money do list two Ming dynasty era banknotes but don’t list other Chinese banknotes and promissory notes produced before the Qing dynasty, John E. Sandrock claims that banknotes from the Song, Liao, Jin, Yuan, and Ming dynasty notes have survived while paper notes from the Tang, Later Zhou, and Western Xia dynasties do not seem to have any extant specimens. Sandrock states that because many of these notes are either one of a kind specimens in the hands of either private collectors or museums while ancient Chinese paper notes that don’t have any (known) surviving specimens are still known due to a great number of Chinese numismatic works and archeological finds, that these notes are therefore "not collectible" and are excluded from notaphilic catalogues for that reason. Sandrock claims that since these early forms of paper money is why paper money exists today that the hobby of notaphily would benefit from having them in catalogues. " could benefit from having the Later Zhou, Western Xia, and Qara-Khitai parts removed, but Tang era flying cash are non-collectible. Also I can't find any news report stating that the banknote found in the wooden luohan is fake, I can rewrite the piece stating that an alleged note was found and then add a "[Citation needed]" which where you can source the claim that the banknote is fake. By willfully ignoring this find in the "surviving specimens" section readers who will look up more information regarding it might think that the note is real and that "Wikipedia just missed it" if no counterclaim to its authenticity is noted here. --Donald Trung (talk) 06:52, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Going over the second (2nd) Sandrock paper again, it doesn't use the Ch'uan Pu T'ung Chih except for in a brief mention of the fantasy notes from above, it uses a number of reliable sources and self-references Sandrock's own earlier work (which is something authors do all the time), while the first paper can in its entirety be dismissed because of it builds too much on a deliberate fraud to trick collectors, the second paper barely mentions it and uses more reliable authors. I don't think that both Sandrock papers should be thrown out because the first is unreliable, even if they are part of a series. --Donald Trung (talk) 07:48, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

@Donald Trung:There is a lack of inline citations in Sandrock's paper but the Ch'uan Pu T'ung Chih can be found throughout the article. On the first page he uses it to declare that there were 60 different types of notes (untrue) and records non-existent denominations. Page 3 and 5 have fantasy notes. Page 14 makes the claim that 1368 is the earliest year possible for a Ming note, which is not true as the bureau responsible for paper money was set up in 1374 with printing beginning the following year. Page 10 is quite awful when he denounces the failure on the part of modern day catalogers to include these anciient [sic] notes in their works. Quite simply it's because these notes are fakes, he just wasn't aware of it. He was also completely wrong in asserting that notes other than the Ming 1 guan are ignored. Most research originates in China as that is where notes and printing plates are discovered. Only plates or fragments of plates from the Song and Jin dynasties have survived. There are no Yuan notes in private hands, they can only be found in museums. The Ming 1 guan was the only consistently printed note of that dynasty and it is the only one available in private hands. The luohan note was pronounced as fake by several members of the International Bank Note Society quickly after the article came out. They alerted Mossgreen Auctions to have it pulled, there was no updated press release. Mossgreen went out of business last year.--Countakeshi (talk) 15:08, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

@Countakeshi:, ah, thanks for clarifying, I thought that the Ch'uan Pu T'ung Chih was only used for the first paper and the general lack of online citations in the work makes it more difficult to verify. I also wasn't aware that no Mongol notes were in private hands, unfortunately searching for those facts doesn't give that many results. But it would be better to replace a statement with a better one and source it rather than just remove it without clarifying in the article why the text was wrong. Also as both CNN and Fox News reported on the luohan note anyone could just later reinsert it back into the article without knowing that as fake, and no one doing research into the subject can easily find that it has been declared a fake. --Donald Trung (talk) 18:58, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

@Donald Trung:Absolutely nothing was published in public about the luohan note being a fake. This was internal discussion in the IBNS forum. Look at the Fox article again. It contradicts the article you wrote. There is a glaring anachronism. That's just one of the mistakes made by the forger. As for why a financially struggling auction house with a controversial reputation would let the sale of this obvious forgery take place is anyone's guess.--Countakeshi (talk) 05:04, 17 August 2019 (UTC)