Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
3 Dollars
| Issuer | Colonial Bank of Canada |
|---|---|
| Year | 1859 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 3 Dollars |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | The obverse is executed in fine intaglio engraving on a light ground. A central allegorical vignette presents two classical female figures flanking a third who holds a staff and a shield bearing the British flag, symbolising commerce and dominion. To the lower left, a smaller vignette shows an armoured knight on horseback. To the lower right, an oval portrait of a young woman in Victorian dress appears as a secondary vignette. Numeral «3» counters appear at upper left and upper right, with a decorative rosette guilloche at far right. The issuer's name «COLONIAL BANK OF CANADA» and the text «TORONTO» are set in bold letterpress, with the promise to pay «THREE DOLLARS» inscribed below, and «INCORPORATED BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT» along the lower border. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | THREE DOLLARS COLONIAL BANK OF CANADA TORONTO Will pay THREE DOLLARS to Bearer CAPITAL $2,000,000 INCORPORATED BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT 3 |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
The Colonial Bank of Canada was a short-lived institution chartered in 1859 in Canada West, and this $3 note represents one of its earliest — and effectively only — series of issued notes. The denomination itself is a relic of pre-Confederation currency logic, when threes, fours, and fives competed on equal footing and issuers still designed around Spanish milled dollar fractions as much as sterling equivalents.
The American Bank Note Company in New York dominated Canadian chartered bank printing through this period, and the back-printed underprint here was standard ABNC security practice of the era — a lathe-work pattern intended to defeat the photo-reproductive counterfeiting methods then emerging.
The Colonial Bank folded before Confederation reshuffled the chartered banking field entirely.