[mcc168]

I bought this copper medal on eBay around 2002. It is 60 mm in diameter. Never able to find any info about this. Can someone help? Thank you.

[anaiman]

It looks like the 12th Anniversary of the Issuance of Chinese Lunar Animals issued in 1992.  They were made in both silver and gold.  Someone might know something about a copper version.

[qwasty]

I suspect this is a "fake", or privately issued medal. Most of the fakes are copper plated with gold or silver. I believe this one to be a fake that never received the plating. I can't remember what the silver "capstone" 12 year lunar cycle commemorative looked like, but the gold has images of the coins arranged in a circle. This copper medal appears to depict a mixture of both gold and silver coins.

Of course, I could be wrong, and it may have been a pattern struck in copper before the mint decided to strike two separate versions in gold and silver, but I have no information to support that guess. Did you ever find any more information about this copper version?

I suggest you look for doubling in the medal's design. It looks like there might be doubling from the photos you've shown us. If there is doubling, then it definitely is a crudely made fake, destructively using original or replica coins in a sinker EDM process to reproduce each coin design.

The sinker EDM process is normally called "spark erosion" in numismatic circles. It can be used to make very good copies of coins from the originals, but it destroys the original in the process, and it leaves very small pits in the die that will appear as either raised bumps or pits on the final product, depending on whether it's a positive or a negative copy.

If the process is run too quickly, the pitting or bumps can be seen without a microscope. It looks a bit like corrosion or a matte finish. If it was done slowly, you may need a microscope to detect the telltale pitting, and you will still have a mirror finish in the fields. There are other faking methods that are better, but this method is the cheapest and easiest for a coin of this type.

From the photos you provided, it looks like the coins have a matte (pitted) finish, and the fields of the medal have had the pitting mostly polished away. It's tough to tell for sure from the photos, but that's what it looks like to me.

The doubling is caused when the die maker destroys an original coin partway through the erosion process, and installs a new coin to complete the process of sinking the design into the die. Usually the second (or 3rd, or 4th) coins are always at least a little misaligned, so it leaves some doubling in the pattern.

Genuine coins use engraving techniques, not sinker EDM techniques, so if you see pitting and doubling, you can be sure the coin was made by someone copying the design, not an original mint engraver.

[PandaCollector]

I actually suspect this may be genuine. There is a similar rarely-seen copper or bronze medal for Pandas that was issued in 2001. It includes miniatures of 20 years of Pandas on it. As far as I know the 2001 medal is a Mint product.
Best wishes,
Peter Anthony
http://www.pandacollector.com/

[larrydreher]

I have the silver and bronze versions of the 2001 Panda anniversary.

I bought them a while back by I don't remember that they were particularly expensive.  I think they came as part of set of other 1991 panda coins.  The set included the a 1991 gold panda: the only 3Y gold panda issued, along with the 1991 2 oz silver panda and potentially another coin or two,   If anybody cares, I'm sure I can dig up the original materials.