10 Pounds National Bank

The National Bank Limited was a New Zealand institution operating under a British charter, and this 10 Pounds note dates from a period when private trading banks still issued their own currency alongside the government. The Bank of New Zealand had nearly collapsed in 1895, requiring a government bailout, and the resulting public anxiety about private bank stability made high-denomination notes from any institution a harder sell on the street.

P#206 is among the rarer surviving National Bank issues from this window — the bank was absorbed by Lloyds Bank in 1966, but its pre-Federation New Zealand paper from the 1890s has a very thin survival rate at this denomination.