to commemorate a special event and because of their status as a monetary object, they are considered to one of China's earliest commemorative coinages. Because Six Character Knives are the rarest of all the different types of Qi knives and also among the rarest of all ancient Chinese coinages, they tend to sell for very high prices at auctions. In the year May 2014 a Six Character Knife was sold at an auction conducted by the Xiling Yinshe Auction Co. (西泠印社拍卖有限公司) in the city of Hangzhou for the equivalent of US$140,239 (or 862,500 yuan). Xin dynasty knife money Wang Mang was a nephew of the Dowager Empress Wang. In AD 9, he usurped the throne, and founded the Xin Dynasty. He introduced a number of currency reforms which met with varying degrees of success. Many of the newly introduced currencies under Wang Mang had denominations that did not reflect the intrinsic value of the currency. As an example, a monetary piece may have had a nominal value of 1000 Wu Zhu cash coins had only an intrinsic value of three or four Wu Zhu cash coins. In his attempt to restore the ancient institutions of the Zhou dynasty, Wang Mang had issued many different types of money in very many forms. Because of the unrealistically high nominal value of the money issued under Wang Mang, many Chinese people had turned to casting their own coinages as a response, in order to minimise their losses. As a countermeasure, however, Wang Mang issued edicts that stipulated very strict punishments for those who were caught privately casting coins during his reign. The first reform, in AD 7, retained the Wu Zhu series of cash coins, but reintroduced two versions of the knife money: Unlike the Yi Dao Ping Wu Qian knives, the inscription of the Qi Dao Wu Bao knives aren’t inlaid with gold. The nominal value of the Qi Dao Wu Bao knives was 500 Wu Zhu cash coins. Korean knife money The history of Korean currency dates back to around the 3rd century BC, when first coins in the form of knife coins, also known as "Myeongdojun" in Korean belonging to the state of Yan and Gojoseon; which were said to have been circulated. Hoards of knife money In the year 2012 a Chinese villager in the province of Hebei digging a well in his yard had unearthed a large cache