3 Tiền - Minh Mạng

Minh Mạng's reign saw an aggressive reassertion of Vietnamese administrative independence, and the Board of Revenue — rather than a conventional mint — controlled gold coinage production directly, tying fiscal authority to the throne in ways that peripheral officials could not easily circumvent. These gold tiền were instruments of court ceremony and official reward as much as anything resembling everyday exchange; they moved through the hands of mandarins and tribute delegations, not markets.

Fresnoy's cataloguing of this type remains the primary reference point, though attribution across the reign's two decades is complicated by the absence of date inscriptions on individual pieces.