10 Dollars

The Imperial Bank of China was the country's first government-authorized modern bank, established in 1897 under the supervision of Sheng Xuanhuai. This note predates the proliferation of provincial and foreign-concession bank issues that would fragment Chinese paper currency in the following decade. Broadbent, Fulton & Lawton — a London security printing firm — produced the plates, a common arrangement for Chinese institutions of the period that lacked domestic high-security printing capacity.

The bank collapsed into irrelevance after the 1911 revolution. Notes from this 1898 series are genuinely scarce in any condition.