Catalog
1 Tael Bai Bao
| Issuer | Taiwan Province |
|---|---|
| Year | 1853 |
| Type | Standard circulation coin |
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| Obverse description | Central design featuring two crossed brushes entwined with lotus flowers and foliage, symbolizing civil authority and scholarly virtue. An incused Chinese character appears above and below the central motif within the field. The entire design is encircled by a border of Chinese ideograms reading the denomination and issuing authority. The outer rim is decorated with a repeating rope or bead pattern characteristic of Taiwanese cast silver tael coinage of the mid-19th century. |
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| Mintage | 1853: ND (1853) |
| Additional information |
Taiwan's "Bai Bao" — literally "hundred treasures" — tael coinage of the 1850s was produced under extraordinary administrative pressure, as the island's provincial authorities struggled to maintain a functioning currency supply while cut off from reliable shipments of official Qing cash coins. The sycee-derived weight standard of one tael placed this issue firmly in the commercial bullion tradition rather than the imperial token coinage system, making it functionally closer to a trade ingot than a coin in the metropolitan sense.
Kann's attribution as K#2 places it among the earliest documented machine- or die-struck provincial issues from Taiwan, a distinction that has driven sustained collector interest well beyond what the mintage figures alone would suggest.