100 Dollars

The Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1857, one of several British overseas banks positioned to service trade flows across the eastern route — Bombay, Calcutta, Shanghai, Hong Kong. The dollar-denominated notes were issued for Hong Kong circulation, where the bank maintained a branch competing directly against the Oriental Bank Corporation and, later, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.

Perkins, Bacon produced the plates using their steel-engraving intaglio process, the same technology they applied to postage stamps — including the Penny Black. Notes of this type in any surviving condition are genuinely rare; the bank went into voluntary liquidation in 1893, and remaining stock was almost certainly destroyed.