1 Yuan Farmers Bank of China

The Farmers Bank of China was established in 1933 to extend rural credit and stabilize agrarian finances during a period when the Nationalist government was simultaneously fighting the Communists and managing catastrophic flooding in the Yangtze basin. Its early note issues were printed abroad — De La Rue secured several of these contracts — before domestic printing capacity was expanded later in the decade.

Pick 457 predates the November 1935 currency reform that abolished the silver standard and introduced the fabi system. Notes already in circulation at that moment were absorbed into the new framework rather than immediately withdrawn, giving early Farmers Bank issues an unusually complex circulation history across the reform boundary.