10 000 Dollars

The Government of the Straits Settlements — a Crown Colony administered from Singapore covering Penang, Malacca, and Singapore itself — issued this note under the Currency Ordinance framework that had replaced earlier private bank issues. A denomination of this size was never intended for retail use; these circulated exclusively between trading houses, agency companies, and banks handling the large-volume commodity transactions — rubber, tin, spice — that defined the colony's commercial purpose.

De La Rue printed the series in London across a fourteen-year window that spans the post-WWI rubber boom, the subsequent crash of the early 1920s, and the onset of the Great Depression. Survivorship at this denomination is extremely low. High-value notes in mercantile systems were typically cancelled and returned rather than worn out, meaning most were deliberately destroyed after settlement.