3 Cash - Hongwu Tongbao, Zhe

The Hongwu emperor, having overthrown the Yuan Dynasty in 1368, was deeply suspicious of paper money — the Yuan had debased their paper currency so catastrophically that it had become nearly worthless. His solution was a forced return to bronze coinage, and the Hongwu Tongbao series was minted in multiple denominations across numerous provincial mints simultaneously. The "Zhe" mint mark indicates production at Zhejiang, one of roughly a dozen regional facilities mobilized for this campaign.

The three-cash denomination is distinguished by its mint mark suffix and sits in the middle of a denomination ladder that ran from one cash to ten. Provincial attribution for these pieces was only systematized in scholarship relatively recently — Hartill's cataloguing remains the primary reference for separating what were once lumped together as generic Hongwu issues.