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20 Dollars
| Issuer | The Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1860 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
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| Printer | Batho, Sprague & Co., London, United Kingdom |
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|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Plain blue note with an oval guilloche vignette at centre containing the interlaced cipher "CBIAC" rendered in ornate script lettering, surrounded by a fine engine-turned border forming a rectangular frame. |
| Reverse lettering | CBIAC |
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| Comments |
The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China received its Royal Charter in 1853 and opened branches across the Eastern trade routes almost immediately. By 1860 it was competing directly with the Oriental Bank Corporation and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation — not yet a decade old itself — for dominance in the colonial dollar markets of Hong Kong, Singapore, and the treaty ports. This note predates the bank's 1912 reorganization by half a century and belongs to the earliest stratum of its paper issue.
Batho, Sprague & Co. handled a significant portion of British colonial banknote printing in the mid-Victorian period before the larger security printers consolidated the market. Their work for this series is among the more documented examples of their colonial output.