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20 Pounds Bank of New South Wales
| Issuer | Bank of New South Wales |
|---|---|
| Year | 1870-1890 |
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| Currency | Pound (1840-1967) |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette of a seated allegorical female figure holding a shield and caduceus, with a globe at upper centre and sailing ships in the background. The face bears the bank title and branch designation for Wanganui, with the promise-to-pay legend and denomination inscribed in letterpress. Ornate engraved borders frame the composition in a style characteristic of Perkins, Bacon security printing of the period. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | NEW ZEALAND BANK OF NEW SOUTH WALES ON DEMAND I PROMISE TO PAY THE BEARER TWENTY POUNDS STERLING WANGANUI FOR THE BANK OF NEW SOUTH WALES TWENTY POUNDS NEW ZEALAND |
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| Comments |
The Bank of New South Wales was among the oldest and most powerful of the Australian colonial trading banks, and its higher-denomination notes like this one functioned primarily as interbank settlement instruments rather than circulating currency — twenty pounds was well above what most working colonists handled in a month. Perkins, Bacon & Petch, the London security printers behind a remarkable proportion of nineteenth-century British colonial banknote production, supplied the printed sheets to Sydney, where dates and serial numbers were completed locally before issue.
The two-decade span of this type reflects how infrequently the bank bothered to redesign a note that saw little street-level wear.