Catalog
200 Gulden
| Issuer | De Javasche Bank |
|---|---|
| Year | 1897-1922 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 205 × 133 mm |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | DE JAVASHE BANK BETAALT AAN TOONDER TWEE HONDERD GULDEN BATAVIA, 9 SEPTEMBER 1919. SPECIMEN JOH ENSCHEDÉ EN ZONEN (Translation: The Javanese Bank Pay to the Bearer Two Hundred Gulden Batavia, September 9, 1919. Specimen Joh. Enschedé and Sons) |
| Reverse description | Violet and brown bicolour note whose central field is occupied by a four-language anti-counterfeiting legal notice printed in Dutch, Javanese (in Hanacaraka script), Chinese, and Malay (in Jawi script). The text panels are arranged within a structured typographic layout framed by guilloche border work, with the denomination repeated in each language block. The restrained decorative scheme is consistent with Enschedé's utilitarian reverse designs of the period. |
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| Comments |
De Javasche Bank's 200 Gulden represented serious money in colonial Netherlands Indies — well beyond the daily wage of virtually any local worker and used almost exclusively in commercial transactions between trading houses, plantation concerns, and the bank itself. Notes of this denomination rarely passed through ordinary hands, which partly explains why circulated examples in lower grades are actually harder to find than cleaner ones: most were handled carefully by the few who touched them at all.
Enschedé's involvement is worth noting — the Haarlem firm had been producing securities work since the early eighteenth century and brought genuine intaglio craft to the series. The 25-year span of this issue reflects how slowly high-denomination notes turned over in colonial banking practice.