10 Cash - Xianfeng Zhongbao, Boo-jyi, iron

Cast rather than struck, this iron cash belongs to an emergency expansion of the Qing monetary system forced by the catastrophic fiscal drain of the Taiping Rebellion. Beginning in 1851, the rebellion severed imperial control over the Yangtze revenue corridor, and by the mid-1850s the Board of Revenue mint in Beijing — the Boo-jyi — was producing iron and lead pieces alongside brass simply to keep coinage in circulation. Iron issues were explicitly second-tier; the population knew it, and hoarding of copper and brass accelerated accordingly.

The Hartill 22.1055 attribution places this among the scarcer iron denominational experiments of the Xianfeng period, most of which had short production windows before being abandoned as impractical.