20 Pounds

Fiji's Government Note issue — not a central bank series, but notes issued directly by the colonial administration — reflects the territory's unusual monetary position in the early twentieth century. The British pound was legal tender, but shipping hard currency to a remote Pacific colony was costly and unreliable, making locally issued government paper a practical necessity rather than a monetary experiment.

Thomas De La Rue's involvement guarantees a high standard of intaglio work, though at the twenty-pound level, circulation was almost certainly confined to inter-merchant and government transactions. A laborer in 1920s Fiji would never handle one. Surviving examples are rare precisely because so few were printed and fewer still left active commercial hands.