1 Yuan / Dollar Bank of China

The Bank of China was established in February 1912, within weeks of the Qing dynasty's abdication, replacing the old Daqing Bank as the new republic's central financial institution. This 1 Yuan note is among the earliest issues under that mandate — printed by the American Bank Note Company in New York, a firm that handled currency production for multiple Asian governments during a period when domestic security printing infrastructure simply did not exist in China.

Pick 25 is known with several branch overprints, each designating a specific city of payment. These overprints significantly affect scarcity; certain provincial branches issued far smaller quantities, and notes bearing those overprints trade at substantial premiums over the common Shanghai examples.