Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
1/2 Rigsdaler - Christian VII Kongelige Grønlandske Handel
| Issuer | Den Kongelige Grønlandske Handel (Royal Greenlandic Trading Company) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1804 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | The royal cypher of Christian VII is positioned to the upper left, with the serial number to the upper right. The promissory text is set within a large central triangle, a distinctive compositional device characteristic of early Danish colonial currency, with the denomination and issuing authority rendered in period letterpress typography. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 1/2 Rigsdaler. Den Kongelige Grönlandſke Handel be- taler denne Anviisning ved Handelsſtederne i Grönland med 1/2 Rdlr., ſkriver Otte og Fyrgetyve Skilling Danſk Courant. Kiöbenhavn 1804. (Translation: 1/2 Rigsdaler. The Royal Greenlandic Trading will pay this note at the trading posts in Greenland with 1/2 Rigsdaler, written 48 Skilling Danish Courant. Copenhagen 1804) |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Den Kongelige Grønlandske Handel was a Danish crown monopoly controlling all trade with Greenland, and its paper notes were not general-purpose currency in any conventional sense — they functioned within a closed company-store economy where Greenlandic hunters and employees could receive and spend them only through the trading posts themselves. No mechanism existed for redemption outside that system. The notes were, in effect, scrip.
The 1804 series predates any formal Greenlandic banking infrastructure by well over a century. Christian VII, whose name the note bears, had been declared legally incapacitated in 1784 — twenty years before this issue — with Andreas Peter Bernstorff and later the Crown Prince Frederik running actual government. The king's name on this note is largely ceremonial.