2 Cash - Yongli Tongbao, with Er Li

The Yongli Emperor — the last serious claimant of the Ming dynasty — spent his entire reign in flight, his court pushed progressively southward and westward by Qing armies. Coinage was struck at multiple itinerant mints across Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, and briefly Burma, with no central control over output or alloy. The Er Li (二厘) denomination mark on this cash piece reflects an attempt to assign a fractional silver-equivalent value to base-metal coinage — a wartime fiscal measure with little practical enforcement.

Yongli survived until 1662, when Wu Sangui strangled him in Yunnan on behalf of the Qing.