20 Fen - Guangxu Pattern, silver

Pattern coinage from Szechuan in the 1890s occupies a genuinely complicated place in Chinese numismatic history. The province was operating its own mint at Chengdu under the broader Qing push to modernize and regularize silver coinage, and 1897 sits squarely in the experimental phase — before output stabilized and before Beijing had fully asserted central control over provincial striking. Pattern pieces from this period were produced in very small numbers to test dies, and many never progressed to circulation strikes at all.

The KM#Pn11 "var." designation signals a die or detail difference from the primary cataloged pattern, likely in the arrangement of characters or border treatment — distinctions that matter considerably to specialists in this series.