1 Cash - Gia Long Thông Bảo, with dot

Gia Long, the emperor who unified Vietnam in 1802 after decades of civil war, issued cash coins in the established Sino-Vietnamese tradition — square-holed cast brass pieces whose form had circulated across East Asia for centuries. The dot variety catalogued here distinguishes itself from the plain type by a single raised point on the reverse, almost certainly a mint or furnace mark rather than an ornamental choice, used to track output across multiple simultaneous casting operations.

Vietnam's cash coinage under Gia Long was produced at provincial foundries, not a single centralized facility, which accounts for the considerable variation in fabric and metal quality encountered across the series.