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1 Cash - Guangxu Tongbao, Guwang / Guang, unorthodox type, struck
| Issuer | Empire of China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1889-1890 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Reference(s) | Hartill#22.1334, Schjoth#1588, Y#189 |
| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Chinese (traditional, regular script) |
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| Reverse description | The reverse presents a bilingual mint and denomination inscription arranged in the conventional four-quadrant format around the central square hole. Above the hole appear two Chinese characters 庫平 (Ku Ping, meaning Treasury standard), below appear 一錢 (Yi Qian, meaning One Qian), to the left is a Manchu script word reading 'Guwang' (an unorthodox rendering of Guang), and to the right is the single Chinese ideogram 廣 (Guang), together identifying the Guangdong (Canton) mint in an atypical romanized-influenced Manchu transcription. All characters are rendered in raised relief within a plain field, bounded by inner and outer raised rims. |
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| Additional information |
The Guangxu Tongbao series encompasses an enormous range of provincial and sub-provincial issues, many authorized only loosely — or not at all — by the Board of Revenue in Beijing. This "Guwang/Guang" piece falls into the category of unorthodox types that numismatists have long struggled to assign to a specific mint with confidence. Hartill's cataloguing of these variants acknowledges the ambiguity directly. The late 1880s saw renewed attempts to rationalize Qing cash coinage ahead of the shift toward machine-struck issues, which effectively rendered hand-cast provincial types obsolete within a decade.