VERY RARE and eminently desired pattern-only issue presents an exceptional flashy and lustrous nature. The strike is quite sharp and exacting, with expert precision within the hair and mustache of Chang as well as within the design of the Five-Colored Flag of the Republic on the reverse.
Testifying to the type’s incredible popularity, a PCGS SPECIMEN-64 (emanating from the Pinnacle Collection) realized a total of $2.28 million in our April 2021 Hong Kong Auction (Lot # 50016). Furthermore, just five examples (including the aforementioned Pinnacle specimen) have been graded finer at PCGS, revealing just how difficult it is to encounter an exceptional representative as is the case with the present crown.
A pattern is a coin with a proposed design, and this one shows Zhang Zuolin, also known as the “Mukden Tiger.” A warlord of Manchuria, he gained the presidency in June 1927 and ruled for just under a year before he was driven from power and assassinated.
Chang Tso-lin (sometimes known as the Mukden Tiger) rose to incredible heights from humble beginnings. Eventually becoming the governor of Fengtien and Generalissimo of the Republic’s land and naval forces, he was murdered by Japanese militarists in a railcar explosion on 4 June 1928.
One of the most powerful warlords in 1920’s China, Chang Tso-lin (Zhang Zuolin) was, as Kann aptly observes, “a self-made man, who understood [how] to amass great power and still greater fortunes.”
Only portrayed on a small series of Patterns from the silver Dollar up to a gold 50 Dollar piece produced during his short-lived hold over Beijing and Tientsin from 1926 to 1928, Chang’s coins remain some of the rarest and most highly sought after of all Republican issues, numerous examples of which have been known to have set all-time price records when they came to auction.
Proposed not long after Chang’s death by railcar bomb on June 4th, 1928, this last Pattern to celebrate the “Grand Marshal” (also nicknamed the “Mukden Tiger”) has only come to auction an exceedingly small handful of times over the last several decades, with the type even missing from such famous collections as Norman Jacobs, R.N.J Wright, and Wa She Wong.
Auction Monday April 07, 2025
Estimate $1 million dollars
