Catalog
25 Cents Darvel Bay
| Issuer | The Darvel Bay (Borneo) Tobacco Plantations Limited |
|---|---|
| Year | 1880-1890 |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 25 THE DARVEL BAY (BORNEO) TOBACCO PLANTATIONS, LIMITED. Will pay to Bearer on demand the sum of TWENTY FIVE CENTS at their Lahat Datu or Lamin Segama Estates Accountant General Manager Charles Skipper & East London. |
| Reverse description | Printed entirely in blue, the reverse is covered by a fine engine-turned guilloche pattern across the full field. Three circular rosette medallions are arranged horizontally at centre, the largest occupying the middle position and bearing the numeral '25' in ornate script, flanked by two smaller concentric guilloche rosettes, the whole enclosed within an elaborate lace-work border frame. |
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| Comments |
The Darvel Bay (Borneo) Tobacco Plantations Limited was one of several private agricultural concessions operating in British North Borneo during the 1880s under the newly chartered British North Borneo Chartered Company, which assumed administrative control of the territory from 1881. Labour was scarce, infrastructure nearly absent, and currency from the mainland rarely penetrated the interior — conditions that pushed plantation operators to issue their own scrip for worker payments and on-site trade.
Charles Skipper & East handled a surprisingly wide range of colonial and quasi-commercial currency printing in this period, and the Darvel Bay notes fall squarely into that category: functional instruments for an isolated economy, not legal tender in any formal sense.