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100 Dollars
| Issuer | Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation |
|---|---|
| Year | 1888-1893 |
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| Reference(s) | P#132 |
| Obverse description | Red-toned note with a central oval guilloche vignette flanked by the denomination $100 in ornate panels at upper left and right, with the royal coat of arms at centre top. The issuer's title THE HONG KONG & SHANGHAI BANKING CORPORATION is inscribed across the middle, with the promise text ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS below, and the clause By Order of the Board of Directors at foot. Chinese characters appear in vertical columns at both lateral margins, and HONG KONG is printed in large letters along the lower border. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | THE HONG KONG & SHANGHAI BANKING CORPORATION $100 ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS By Order of the Board of Directors HONG KONG Chief Acct. Chief Manager. |
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| Comments |
HSBC's late-nineteenth-century Hong Kong dollar notes occupied a peculiar legal space: the bank issued them under colonial ordinance rather than any central banking authority, making HSBC — along with the Chartered Bank and a handful of others — effectively responsible for Hong Kong's private note issue. The arrangement persisted, in modified form, well into the twentieth century. De La Rue had secured the contract by the 1880s, displacing earlier printers, and the Hong Kong series represented some of their most technically demanding colonial work of that decade.
P#132 is genuinely rare at this denomination. Notes from this period that survived the humidity and commercial intensity of Treaty Port banking are few; most circulated hard through merchant houses and godowns before redemption.