Catalog
| Issuer | Government of British Honduras |
|---|---|
| Year | 1924-1928 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Purple intaglio print over a green and yellow guilloche underprint with red serial numbers. The colonial coat of arms of British Honduras occupies the top centre, flanked by denomination and issuer inscriptions in a formal letterpress arrangement characteristic of early twentieth-century De La Rue colonial issues. The promise-to-pay text, place of issue, and Commissioners of Currency attribution are laid out in structured typographic registers across the face. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | BRITISH HONDURAS |
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| Comments |
British Honduras retained De La Rue for its higher denominations well into the 1920s, and P#17 is among the scarcest of the colonial series — the 1924–1928 window was a low-volume print run serving a small mercantile economy heavily dependent on mahogany and chicle exports, not retail banking. Circulation demand at this value was thin by any measure.
The "Purple" designation distinguishes this from earlier issues in the same denomination where color shifts between printings were significant enough to require catalog differentiation. Known surviving examples are few, and most that surface show handling consistent with commercial rather than banking use.