Guquan huikao 古泉彙考

Guquan huikao 古泉彙考 is a book on historical coins compiled during the high Qing period 清 (1644-1911) by Weng Shupei 翁樹培 (1765–1809), courtesy name Yiquan 宜泉, from Dajing 大興 (today part of Beijing).

The book of 8 juan length was not published as a print. The first public edition were extracts of the text (juan 1 and 8) in Ding Fubao's 丁福保 (1874–1952) Guqian da cidian 古錢大辭典. This version is based on at textual revision carried out by Liu Xihai 劉喜海 (1793–1852; author of Guquanyuan 古泉苑) until 1840. Other parts were published by Tang Xianshu 王獻唐 (1896–1960) in 1936 in the series Guquanxue 古泉學.

The text describes coins–through history according to shape, colour, quality, and inscriptions and also gives information about their sound when struck. Weng's work is of great scholarly value for its detailed research on all types of the coins described.

The text is arranged chronologically and covers the pre-imperial period (juan 1), the early imperial period with the five-zhu 五銖 standard coin (2-3), and the mid-imperial period until the Ming era 明 (1368-1644), when reign-mottos became standard inscription (4-6). Weng also made some observations concerning monetary policy and found out that in early imperial times, there was always a lack of currency on the markets. Fascicle 7 is dedicated to foreign coins, and the last part of the book to amulet coins (yasheng pin 厭勝品).

Weng's book is a systematic research on Chinese monetary history. It uses many of earlier texts on the history of money but critically evaluates them and adds further observations. Some of the sources Weng used were recorded in the Ming-period encyclopaedia Yongle dadian 永樂大典, the greatest part of which is lost. Most importantly, Weng was the first coin specialist who collected exact data on the size and colour (alloy) of old coins. For all this, he nearly paid no attention to the issue of weight.