10 Cash - Guangxu Pattern, white copper

Kiangsu's 1906 pattern issues were produced as the Qing administration wrestled with standardizing provincial coinage — a problem that had plagued the dynasty since the southern mints began striking cash coins on foreign-influenced machinery in the 1890s. The Board of Revenue in Beijing was pushing hard to consolidate minting authority, and provincial pattern submissions of this period represent the last serious attempts by individual provinces to influence what a unified national coinage might look like.

White copper — baitong, an alloy with a long Chinese metallurgical history — was being evaluated as an alternative to the red copper flooding circulation. The experiment was largely abandoned within a few years as the dynasty itself collapsed.