Catalog
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| Issuer | Central Bank of Ceylon |
|---|---|
| Year | 1952-1954 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Brown on purple, green and orange multicolour underprint. Central vignette shows two women in traditional Kandyan dress, rendered in fine intaglio engraving. The denomination and issuing authority are inscribed in English above and below the central vignette. |
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| Protection type | Watermark |
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| Comments |
Ceylon's first post-independence central bank — established in 1950 — wasted little time asserting itself on the currency. Bradbury Wilkinson had printed colonial-era Ceylon notes before, so the continuity of the printing relationship masked what was actually a significant institutional rupture: notes now issued under a Ceylonese authority rather than a currency board operating at imperial remove.
Pick 53 is the higher-denomination workhorse of that transitional series, and the watermark — Bradbury Wilkinson's standard security provision of the period — remains the note's primary authentication feature. Paper quality on this series can suffer from tropical humidity damage, a known condition issue across surviving specimens from this region and era.