Four Chinese characters Kai Yuan Tong Bao ("The Inaugural currency") / Two crescents and a nail mark. 25mm, 3.73 grams. Issued in ca.732-907 AD. Schjoth #312ff; Hartill 14.6ag var (three crescents instead of the two crescents and a nail mark).

Late issues of Kai Yuans are usually quite crude - they used earlier Kai Yuans as mother-cash instead of using new molds, as the coins, as a result, tend to be cruder and more poorly cast compared to the earlier issues.

The Tang Dynasty, with its capital at Changan (present-day Xian), the most populous city in the world at the time, is generally regarded as a high point in Chinese civilization - a golden age of cosmopolitan culture. Its territory, acquired through the military campaigns of its early rulers, was greater than that of the Han period, and it rivalled that of the later Yuan Dynasty, Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty. In 907 the Tang Dynasty was ended when Zhu Wen, now a military governor, deposed the last emperor of Tang, Emperor Ai of Tang, and took the throne for himself (known posthumously as Emperor Taizu of Later Liang). He established the Later Liang Dynasty, which inaugurated the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. A year later the deposed Emperor Ai was poisoned to death by Zhu Wen.

This coin is unconditionally guaranteed to be authentic.