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| Issuer | A-erh-t'ai T'ung-yung Yin-hang (Altai General Use Bank) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Printed in red-orange on white paper, the obverse carries a central vignette of a horse-drawn cart passing through a monumental city gate, framed by a guilloche border with repeated denomination characters 拾圓 in oval cartouches at left and right. The bank title 阿爾泰通用銀行券 appears in a central panel at top, with the Republican era date inscription 中華民國七年印 (Year 7 of the Republic) above the vignette. Serial number 00832 is printed in black at upper left and upper right. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 阿爾泰通用銀行券 中華民國七年印 拾圓 |
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| Comments |
The Altai General Use Bank was one of several short-lived regional institutions established in the fractured years of the early Chinese Republic, when central monetary authority had collapsed in all but name. The Altai region — remote, contested, and subject to competing Russian and Chinese commercial pressures — generated its own paper issues out of practical necessity rather than formal banking policy.
The "L" suffix on the Pick reference indicates a left-half fragment, meaning this note was officially cancelled by bisection — a common redemption or accounting practice in provincial Chinese banking of the period. Finding an intact example of S2490 is considerably harder.