Catalog
10 Pounds
| Issuer | Commercial Bank of Tasmania |
|---|---|
| Year | ND (1910) |
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| Printer | Perkins Bacon & Co. |
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| Obverse description | Intaglio-printed note with a classical female vignette at left, seated beside a globe and anchor with a sailing vessel in the background. The denomination £10 appears in an oval at upper right, with COMMERCIAL BANK / HOBART TOWN / TASMANIA inscribed in the central panel. Ornate guilloche border frames the entire note, with HOBART TOWN in vertical letterpress along both side margins. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | COMMERCIAL BANK HOBART TOWN TASMANIA Promise to pay the Bearer on Demand the Sum of TEN POUNDS Sterling Value received. FOR THE COMMERCIAL BANK, Director. TEN £10 |
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| Comments |
The Commercial Bank of Tasmania was absorbed into the Bank of Australasia in 1921, making its surviving notes genuinely scarce — this issue predates that merger by over a decade and belongs to the final phase of Australian private bank currency before the Commonwealth Bank progressively squeezed out the trading banks' right of issue. The ten pound denomination was rarely seen by ordinary workers; it circulated almost exclusively in commercial transactions between merchants and pastoral businesses.
Perkins Bacon's intaglio work on Australian private bank notes of this period is consistently fine, the firm having supplied engraved security printing to colonial issuers since the mid-nineteenth century.