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25 Dollars
| Issuer | Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1903 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | The obverse is printed on pale pink paper with green guilloche borders and corner ornaments. At centre, the Royal Arms vignette appears beneath the legend "INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER", flanked by two oval underprint panels each reading "$25". The bank title "THE CHARTERED BANK OF INDIA, AUSTRALIA & CHINA" is set in bold letterpress across the middle register, with the denomination "Twenty Five Dollars" rendered in large intaglio numerals and script text, and the place of issue "HONGKONG" appearing at lower centre. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 印度澳門中山滙理銀行 INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER $25 No. HONGKONG 伍拾貳 THE CHARTERED BANK OF INDIA, AUSTRALIA & CHINA Twenty Five Dollars BY ORDER OF THE COURT OF DIRECTORS ACTG. MANAGER HONGKONG 25 |
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| Comments |
The Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China issued this denomination specifically to serve treaty ports and entrepôt hubs across East and Southeast Asia, where dollar-denominated trade dominated and sterling notes were impractical for day-to-day commercial settlement. The $25 value is an oddity — not a round sum in any obvious monetary tradition — almost certainly calibrated to correspond with a specific local currency equivalence or commodity unit at the time of issue.
P#37 is among the rarer survivors of the series. The bank's Eastern branch notes from this period suffered heavy attrition through heat, humidity, and active commercial use, and relatively few 1903-dated examples are documented in institutional or private collections today.