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20 Cents Agricultural Bank of Four Provinces
| Issuer | Agricultural Bank of the Four Provinces (四省農民銀行) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1933 |
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| Value | 20 Fen (0.20) |
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| Obverse description | Purple and yellow note with an oval vignette at right enclosing two farmers carrying shoulder baskets in a rural landscape. The large Chinese characters 貳角 (Twenty Cents) occupy the centre within an ornate guilloche underprint, with the denomination numeral 20 repeated at each corner. The bank title appears in Chinese across the upper margin, a manuscript signature at centre left, and a serial number prefixed 'B' at lower centre. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Brown note centred on a large guilloche rosette bearing the numeral 20, flanked by the denomination figure 20 at the upper left and right corners. The bank title runs in Chinese characters across the top, with bilingual redemption clauses in Chinese flanking the central design at left and right. The English legend TWENTY CENTS appears in a banner at lower centre, and a fine geometric border frames the entire composition. |
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| Comments |
The Agricultural Bank of the Four Provinces was established in 1933 by the Nationalist government to service rural credit needs across Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, and Anhui — the four provinces that formed the core of Chiang Kai-shek's ongoing military campaigns against Communist base areas. The bank's creation was as much a political instrument as an agricultural one, intended to stabilize peasant economies in contested territory and undercut the appeal of Soviet-style land redistribution programs operating in the same regions.
The P#A84A is among the earliest issues, printed in the same year the bank was founded. Low-denomination fractional notes like this 20-cent piece circulated at the village level where silver coinage was scarce and distrusted. The series is genuinely uncommon in any grade.