Most of the existing ancient Chinese coins were minted from copper since iron coins were easily oxidized. Alloys of bronze and brass were used for coin mintage during the Ming (AD 1368-1644) and Ch'ing dynasties (AD 1644-1911). As the smelting process of extracting pure zinc from raw zinc was adequately developed, brass alloys soon became extensively used after the Ch'ing dynasty. An analysis experiment of Ch'ing dynaty coins, using atomic absorption spectrophotometry, resulted in the discovery of seven kinds of elements, namely, copper, tin, lead, zinc, iron, nickel, and silver. The results indicate that copper coins of the Ch'ing dynasty fall into the brass alloy category, with a composition of copper 62.67% - 47.98%; zinc 41.8% - 26.33%; lead 6.94% - 0.11%; tin 2.87% - 0.02%; small amounts of iron, only 2.00% - 0.01%; trace amounts of silver 0. 08% - 0.01%, and nickel 0.25% - 0.01% were discovered as impurities of the pure copper mineral.