10 Cash - Guangxu Without minting authority, brass

The "without minting authority" designation reflects a genuine administrative gap in late Qing coinage. By 1907, the Guangxu Emperor's court had issued authorizations to numerous provincial mints to strike cash coins, but regulatory collapse meant that several facilities — and possibly private operations — struck pieces that cannot be attributed to any sanctioned issuer. Y#10a captures this ambiguity as a catalog category rather than a mint attribution. The shift to brass from the earlier red copper alloy was itself a cost-cutting response to copper price pressures hitting the dynasty's already strained finances.