Shengbao

The first cash coins of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were issued in the year 1853 in the capital of Tianjing (present day Nanjing).

[5][6] The reason why the Shengbao tend to be very diverse is because the central government of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had allowed local power-holders within their realm to produce their own cash coins within their jurisdiction.

[9] The treasury of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was initially operated by village pawnbrokers, as was the custom in the rural areas of China at that time.

These coins typically have wide rims which were excellently polished and were based on the Xianfeng era coinage produced at the Suzhou mint.

The third type was also Hunanese in origin and bore the same inscription as the aforementioned coins written in regular script but the words Shengbao (聖寶) were written horizontally from right-to-left around the square center hole on the reverse, the Chinese characters of these cash coins were not protruding from the surface as high as those of the other types of Shengbao.

[5] In one Chinese village a technician collecting the iron to build the local furnace received a string of between ten and twenty Taiping Heavenly Kingdom iron cash coins to be melted down to make the furnace; the technician thought that destroying these cash coins would be "a waste" and hid them in his pocket and secretly brought them to his house.