10 Pounds Bank of New Zealand

The Bank of New Zealand was chartered in 1861, and this note belongs to its first series — issued before the bank had established anything resembling a stable branch network across the colony. Perkins, Bacon & Co. were the dominant security printers of the mid-nineteenth century British world, responsible for the first Penny Black stamps and a substantial share of colonial banking paper. Their intaglio work was considered difficult to counterfeit, which mattered considerably in a colonial economy where fraud detection was slow and enforcement slower.

Ten-pound notes in this series would have moved primarily between merchants and pastoralists, not ordinary wage earners. Survivors are genuinely rare.