BOOK REVIEW: CHIPS AND COUPONS IN OLD SHANGHAI

This book trends much more to a coffee-table book filled with page after page of wonderful photos with minimal explanation (all except for a very few words of that in Chinese) than it does to a catalog burdened with catalog numbers, values, or an attempt to arrange items into series. For example, page 128 starts a section entitled "Department Stores" with a short essay in Chinese and then page after page of photos of merchandise coupons, starting with a group from The Sincere Co., Ltd. and going until page 138, which starts the section entitled "Snacks & Candy Stores."

It covers a wide gamut, from metallic transportation tokens ["Tokens" would probably be a more accurate word in the English title than "Chips".], to many different merchandise coupons, to what look like Shanghai cigarette cards, to a very pretty encased postage stamp issued by EWO Beer. Even if you do read Chinese (and I don't, so I speculate a bit here) this work doesn't appear to go much beyond a pictorial survey of thousands of fascinating items from a long-gone world. But it sure is pretty....

As an aside, my copy came from coinsxzh on eBay; I've had a number of perfectly satisfactory dealings with him.

There are a few more images at Scott Semans' list of books: http://coincoin.com/bkCC.htm

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: QUERY: CHIPS AND COUPONS IN OLD SHANGHAI (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v15n46a23.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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