10 Cash - Guangxu Hu Poo

The Hu Poo (Board of Revenue) mint in Beijing was established in 1903 specifically to give the central Qing government a foothold in copper cash production — a market that provincial mints had dominated almost entirely since the machine-struck copper cash program began in the late 1890s. The experiment was short-lived. Political friction between central and provincial authorities over revenue from copper coinage, combined with the mint's inability to compete with the output volumes of Guangdong and Hubei, led to its closure by 1905.

The brevity of that two-year window accounts for the relative scarcity of this type against the flood of provincial 10-cash pieces from the same period.