Hunan was among the more reluctant of the provincial mints to adopt machine-struck copper cash, only doing so after considerable pressure from Beijing to modernize the currency and reduce the chronic shortage of small denomination coinage that was strangling local commerce in the early 1900s. The flower-at-centre varieties multiply because the Boo-nan mint experimented obsessively with die arrangements during this period, producing the cluster of sub-varieties catalogued under Y#112 — minor positional and character differences that were never standardized across the production run.
Hunan was among the more reluctant of the provincial mints to adopt machine-struck copper cash, only doing so after considerable pressure from Beijing to modernize the currency and reduce the chronic shortage of small denomination coinage that was strangling local commerce in the early 1900s. The flower-at-centre varieties multiply because the Boo-nan mint experimented obsessively with die arrangements during this period, producing the cluster of sub-varieties catalogued under Y#112 — minor positional and character differences that were never standardized across the production run.