Catalog
20 Pounds
| Issuer | Standard Bank of South Africa Ltd. |
|---|---|
| Year | 1896 |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Blue and yellow note with the bold heading THE STANDARD BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA LIMITED across the upper portion, above a central oval vignette of a standing allegorical female figure holding a flag, with cattle and a landscape in the background. The denomination TWENTY POUNDS is rendered in large gothic lettering across the centre, flanked by ornate guilloche cornerpieces each bearing the numeral 20. The text PRETORIA BRANCH and a serial number prefix appear in the upper field, with the promise-to-pay clause and BY ORDER OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS inscription in the lower right; this example bears SPECIMEN overprints in red and punch-hole cancellations. |
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| Obverse lettering | THE STANDARD BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA LIMITED TWENTY POUNDS PRETORIA BRANCH By Order of the Board of Directors 20 |
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The Standard Bank of South Africa Ltd. was a British-chartered commercial bank operating across the Cape Colony and the Boer republics, and its notes circulated alongside — and often in competition with — state-issued paper. This 20 Pound denomination sat at the high end of the bank's commercial issue, intended for inter-merchant settlement rather than everyday trade. Twenty pounds in 1896 represented a substantial sum in the South African economy, roughly equivalent to several months' wages for a skilled tradesman.
Waterlow & Sons in London handled the printing, as they did for much of the bank's Victorian-era series. Surviving examples are genuinely scarce — high-denomination commercial bank notes of this period were retired and destroyed through normal banking practice far more reliably than low-denomination notes, which leaked into public hands and survived by accident.