1 Tael Bai Bao

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.