50 Cashes - Guangxu

Kirin Province's brass cash issues of this period occupy an awkward administrative moment: the Qing central government had not yet fully standardized provincial machine-struck coinage, leaving individual provinces to interpret both the denominational system and alloy choices with considerable latitude. Brass rather than copper signals a local procurement decision, almost certainly driven by supply disruptions following the Boxer Uprising and the subsequent foreign occupation of Manchuria's supply routes.

The 50-cash denomination itself was rarely trusted by the public — large-denomination cash coins had a long history of forced overvaluation in Chinese monetary practice, and Kirin's issues circulated at a discount almost immediately.