Chopmark Lookup
Found a chopmark on a coin and want to know which character it is? Use the two methods below to find a match to your chopmark.
Draw or type the character
Sketch the chopmark you see (stroke count and order don't matter), or type the character under the canvas if you already know it. Click any match to see real chopmark photos and script variants.
Know the character? Type it:
Closest matches
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Build it from parts
If you can identify parts of the chopmark, click the parts you can see below. Every character that contains all of the selected parts will be displayed. Chopmarks represented in our library with a picture are highlighted in gold; you may click on those to see the library pictures.
If you already know a larger piece of the character (such as 殳 or 夆), paste it into the box instead. You can paste several parts at once, and every character containing all of them will be displayed: paste 禾刂 and you get 利. Up to five parts, in any order. You can still click parts in the table to narrow the results further (the parts you pasted are tinted gold). If you can also see where a part sits (the left half, the top, inside an enclosure), use the position buttons to narrow the results further; with parts pasted, the position applies to what you pasted.
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Helpful tips:
The better you are at understanding the individual parts of the characters, the better you will be able to find a match. One way to get better at recognizing the parts is to study the radicals.
To see how the same character shifts between modern Hanzi, ancient seal script, and the calligraphy brush hands, browse the Script Style Reference, a visual listing of every chopmark in our library shown in each script style we have on file.
Look through the pages on this site, I've identified many of the chopmarks on these coins, and looking through a few examples should help you get the feel for what you're looking at on your coin. There are many chopmarks, but not as much variety as you might think, so I may show a chopmark that matches a chopmark on your coin.
Keep in mind that many chopmarks do not resemble any modern Chinese characters and you may not find a match. Don't be too frustrated, this happens quite often. Sometimes the chopmark is ancient and we have lost the meaning. Another possibility is the mark is a pseudo-character that only had meaning locally. For some chopmarks, we will never know the meaning, just move on to another one if you get stuck.