Catalog
10 Pounds
| Issuer | Kingdom of Libya |
|---|---|
| Year | 1952 |
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| Printer | Bradbury Wilkinson and Company, United Kingdom (1856-1990) |
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| Obverse description | At left, a profile portrait of King Idris I is set within an ornate medallion frame, flanked by Arabic inscriptions above and a wide guilloche panel extending to the right. A palm tree vignette occupies the far right margin, while a small plant sprig appears at lower centre below the denomination in Arabic script. The serial number is rendered in Arabic-Indic numerals at upper right and in Western numerals at lower right. |
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| Protection type | Watermark |
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| Comments |
Libya's first independent banknote series, of which this is the high-value note, was issued just months after the kingdom's proclamation in December 1951 — making this one of the earliest expressions of Libyan monetary authority under King Idris I. Bradbury Wilkinson, at that point one of the most trusted security printers in the Commonwealth orbit, handled the entire series from their New Malden works.
The 10 Pound denomination circulated in a country whose oil revenues were still negligible; the Libyan pound was backed initially by sterling reserves under a currency board arrangement, not by domestic production. Large-denomination notes like this saw limited everyday use in what was then one of the poorest economies on the African continent.