1 Cash - Xianfeng Tongbao, Boo-he

The Xianfeng reign (1851–1861) saw the Qing monetary system buckle under the combined financial strain of the Taiping Rebellion and the Nian Rebellion. The Board of Revenue Mint in Beijing was forced into a series of increasingly desperate monetary experiments — issuing oversized iron and brass cash in inflated denominations — but the standard 1-cash pieces like this one continued alongside those emergency issues. Boo-he is the Manchu rendering of Baoquan, the Board of Revenue's mint designation.

Hartill 22.842 places this among the ordinary brass issues of 1854–55, a period when copper supplies were already constrained enough that brass alloys had become the practical default at this mint.