Character “Jing”. About 110mm tall, 53.94 grams. Hartill 2.47; Ding 15.

Very nice large spade with the rare “Jing” character. The character is though to refer to a city in Hunan where it was cast. Ding read the character as 亳 Bo, the name of the district of Anhui and the capital of the Yan Kingdom, where he assumed these were cast. Very heavy and large, high quality, with original patina. Seems to have minor repairs on the neck, otherwise intact.

Ex-Stacks Bower's.

Square-shoulder spades were an early form of Chinese money cast during the late Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (c. 6th–3rd century BCE). They evolved from earlier tool-shaped bronze implements but were produced specifically as currency. These spade coins are characterized by their flat, stylized shape with squared shoulders, a short thickened handle (sometimes with a hollow socket), and an inscription on the blade that usually indicated the place of issue, such as a city or region. The inscriptions were typically written in early Chinese script and help identify issuing states like Zhao, Han, or Liang. Compared to earlier "pointed-shoulder" spades, the square-shoulder type appears later and is generally neater and more standardized, reflecting a gradual move toward uniform coinage. They played an important role in the diverse and regionalized monetary systems of pre-imperial China before Qin unification.