10 Cash Pattern, Founding of the Republic: Yuan Shikai, copper, thick rice stocks

Yuan Shikai's provisional presidency in 1912 generated a flurry of pattern coinage as the nascent Republic scrambled to establish a distinct monetary identity separate from Qing dynasty issues still circulating in enormous quantities. This thick-planchet copper pattern — cataloged under at least four separate reference systems, which itself signals how contested the attribution history has been — was never approved for general production. The "thick rice stocks" designation distinguishes it from the thinner-planchet variant of the same type, a die-characteristic difference that has driven significant price divergence between the two at auction.