"My collecting of chopped Spanish colonial coins, silver Reals and gold Escudos, started after I learned that foreign traders were entering Vietnamese ports and using them to purchase Vietnamese goods starting as early as the 1500s. Part of the process was making sure the coins were authentic and then hammering a chop mark into the coin to show it was authentic. I started looking for chops which appeared to look like Vietnamese-Chinese style characters. I started to find a few but could not really verify them as Vietnamese, which was very disappointing.

"But then I found some chops on Vietnamese, Cambodian and Siamese coins and ingots and looked for them on the Spanish colonial coins. I did find some chops and countermarks on both the local coins and ingots and on the Spanish colonial coins! This was becoming more interesting! I started buying a lot of Spanish colonial coins on speculation but most turned out to not be on the local coins and ingots. It was a rare find to find what I was looking for and my collection of chopped Spanish colonial coins started growing with coins I could not trace to Southeast Asia.

"So I talked with Joe Lang and others in Steve Album Rare Coins about my situation and I decided to start consigning them to their firm's auctions. This was also a way to thank Steve for his assisting me a long time ago when he was at Oxford in England when he found some museum curators in Europe for me who had Vietnamese coins and ingots in their collections.

"There are no reserves or minimum bids for any of my lots because I do want all of them to find a new home and reduce the size of my holdings. So have fun bidding on my lots and other interesting lots in this and future auctions at Steve Album Rare Coins."