Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
1000 Customs Gold Units
| Issuer | Central Bank of China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1947 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | P#338 |
| Obverse description | Portrait of Sun Yat-sen in an oval vignette at centre, surrounded by intricate guilloche work, with the denomination 壹仟 repeated in the four corners. Two red seal impressions appear at the lower centre, and the issuer name 中央銀行 is inscribed across the top in Chinese characters. The note is oriented vertically and printed in brown tones with a serial number in red below the portrait. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | A vignette of the Central Bank of China headquarters building in Shanghai occupies the upper portion, rendered in fine line engraving with architectural detail including the clock tower. Below, a large numeral 1000 appears within an ornate guilloche panel above the denomination legend, with two manuscript signatures of the General Manager and Assistant General Manager at the lower centre. The note is printed vertically in olive-brown tones with 1000 repeated in the side borders. |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
The Customs Gold Unit was a notional currency introduced by the Nationalist government in 1930 to stabilize customs duty collection, which had been eroded by inflation eating into silver-based revenue. By 1947, when this note was issued, the CGU had long since become a fiction — the underlying gold reserves it nominally represented were largely exhausted, and the Nationalist regime was financing the civil war through money creation on a catastrophic scale.
Chung Hwa Book Co. was primarily a commercial publisher pressed into banknote production as demand outpaced the capacity of dedicated security printers. The 1947 high-denomination issues were obsolete within months as hyperinflation rendered four-digit CGU notes effectively worthless before they could circulate meaningfully.