10 Dollars

The Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China was one of the major British exchange banks operating across Asia in the nineteenth century, issuing notes that functioned primarily as instruments of trade finance rather than everyday currency. Its Hong Kong dollar notes circulated alongside those of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and the Oriental Bank — a crowded field that only the strongest institutions survived.

The Mercantile Bank did not survive intact. Severe losses in the mid-1880s forced a reconstruction in 1893, after which it was refloated as the Mercantile Bank of India. Notes from the 1883–1886 window predate that collapse and are rare partly because the bank's own difficulties disrupted normal record-keeping and redemption procedures.