1 Tael - Guangxu Pattern

The 1900 Peking Mint tael patterns were produced at a pivotal and catastrophic moment — the Boxer Uprising had brought eight foreign armies into the capital, and the imperial court fled to Xi'an in August of that year. Whether these pieces were struck before or after the occupation of the mint by allied forces remains a point of genuine scholarly dispute. Kann documented several tael pattern varieties from this period, and the distinction between official trial pieces and post-occupation strikings affects both attribution and value considerably.

The tael never achieved standardized coinage status in Qing monetary policy, defeated repeatedly by the entrenched interests of native banks and regional weight variations across provinces.