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 Dollar
| Issuer | British North Borneo Company |
|---|---|
| Year | 1919-1922 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| 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 | Bradbury, Wilkinson & Company |
| 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 | Black on red underprint, with a central vignette of Mount Kinabalu at upper center framed by ornate guilloche work. The issuer's title arches across the top in bold letterpress, with the denomination repeated in large red overprint across the center. Two commissioner signature lines appear at lower left and lower right, with serial number at upper left and lower right. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | ONE DOLLAR ONE ONE ONE |
| 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 |
The British North Borneo Chartered Company was one of the last surviving private colonial enterprises still issuing its own currency well into the twentieth century — a legal holdover from an 1881 royal charter that granted it sovereign-level powers over what is now the Malaysian state of Sabah. By 1919, that arrangement was already looking anachronistic, and the company's paper currency circulated alongside Straits Settlements notes in a trading territory where the distinction between corporate and state authority was genuinely blurry.
Bradbury, Wilkinson produced the plates in London to a high engraved standard — the firm handled colonial and quasi-governmental work across the Empire routinely. Notes from this series tend to suffer from tropical humidity damage, foxing, and fold weakness along the central horizontal crease, a product of how they were stored and handled in a coastal trading environment.
The company ceased issuing notes after the Japanese occupation of 1941–45, after which North Borneo became a Crown Colony.