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10 Cents The Canton Municipal Bank
| Issuer | The Canton Municipal Bank |
|---|---|
| Year | 1933 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
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| Printer | Waterlow & Sons Limited, London, United Kingdom (1810–1961) |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 廣州市立銀行 通用銀毫 港票即付 印年二十二國民華中 (Translation: The Canton Municipal Bank Payable in Hong Kong Silver Currency The 22nd Year of the National Republic) |
| Reverse description | Central architectural vignette of the Mausoleum of the 72 Martyrs of the Yellow Flower Hill (Huanghuagang), rendered in fine intaglio line engraving and occupying the right portion of the note. To the left, a large denomination numeral "10" is set within an ornate guilloche cartouche, with the denomination panels reading "10 CENTS" in each corner and a red Chinese-character cancel stamp overlaid on the centre. The printer's imprint "WATERLOW & SONS LIMITED LONDON" appears at the foot of the note. |
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| Comments |
The Canton Municipal Bank was a short-lived institution operating in Guangzhou during a period when provincial and municipal authorities across China routinely issued their own paper currency in defiance of — or simply indifferent to — any centralizing monetary policy from Nanjing. Small-denomination fractional notes like this one served real street-level commerce in a city where coin shortages were persistent and silver hoarding common.
Waterlow & Sons produced the plates in London, a routine arrangement for Chinese provincial issuers who wanted security printing they couldn't reliably obtain domestically. The bank's operational lifespan was brief, and surviving notes from this series are genuinely scarce — not because they were carefully preserved, but because they circulated hard in a busy southern port city and most did not survive it.