1 Cash - Xianfeng Tongbao, Boo-fu

The Board of Revenue maintained mints across multiple provinces, but the Fuzhou facility — "Boo-fu" in the romanized board designation — was among the smaller operations and produced cash coins of notoriously inconsistent alloy during the early Xianfeng period. By 1853, copper shortages driven by the Taiping Rebellion's disruption of southern supply routes pushed many provincial mints toward brass substitutes, which is precisely what distinguishes this issue from earlier Daoguang-era cash from the same facility.

Xianfeng coinage is a minefield of varieties. Hartill 22.770 sits within a tightly clustered group of Fuzhou issues where calligraphic differences in the reverse mint mark separate genuine varieties from die deterioration.