10 Yuan Bank of China

The Bank of China's 1941 series was printed in New York by the American Bank Note Company under unusual wartime circumstances — by this point, Japanese forces controlled much of coastal China, and the Nationalist government's financial apparatus was increasingly dependent on foreign printing to maintain credible currency production. The ABNC relationship with Chinese institutions stretched back decades, and the quality of the intaglio work on these notes was markedly superior to anything being produced domestically at the time.

Getting printed notes from New York into Free China meant routing shipments through Burma or over the Hump — overland and air corridors that were neither safe nor reliable. A portion of each print run never arrived.