1 Cash - Zhong Shi

Bangka's tin cash coinage was issued by the Dutch colonial administration in the early nineteenth century specifically to facilitate small transactions in an economy built almost entirely around tin mining. The island was one of the world's most productive tin sources, and paying miners and local traders in a coin made from the very metal being extracted was as much a logistical solution as anything else. Tin was abundant, silver was not.

The casting quality varies considerably across surviving examples — a direct consequence of local production methods rather than metropolitan mint standards.