10 Shillings

The Bank of Western Samoa was established in 1959, just two years after Western Samoa became the first Pacific Island territory to achieve self-government under a United Nations trusteeship — the full independence from New Zealand came in 1962, making this note part of the very first sovereign currency series. Bradbury Wilkinson, based in New Malden, had long experience printing colonial and newly independent nation issues, and the Western Samoan contract fit squarely within that postcolonial transition work they handled across the 1950s and 1960s.

The shilling denomination itself had a short shelf life. Western Samoa decimalized in 1967, replacing the pound-shilling system with the tālā and sene, which renders the 10 Shilling note a pre-decimalization issue with only four years of active currency life after independence.