25 Dollars

The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China was one of the great exchange banks of the British imperial world, operating under Royal Charter from 1853 and handling trade finance across routes that no domestic bank could touch. A 25-dollar denomination sits in an awkward commercial position — too large for retail, deliberately sized for specific mercantile settlements, likely in the Straits Settlements or Hong Kong trade corridors where such round figures had practical clearing utility.

Pick S127 falls within the private bank ("S" series) classification, meaning surviving examples are scarce relative to central-issue notes. Chartered Bank material from this period was not systematically preserved by any archive.