Catalog
3 Dollars - Elizabeth II
| Issuer | Central Bank of the Bahamas |
|---|---|
| Year | 1984 |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Red intaglio print over a multicolour guilloche underprint with black serial numbers. At centre right, a forward-facing portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is shown wearing the Vladimir Tiara and the Queen Victoria Jubilee Necklace, flanked at centre by an outline map of the Bahamas Islands and at left by a vignette of bathers on a beach. A see-through register device incorporating the bank logo appears at left, with the watermark window reserved at right. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | THE CENTRAL BANK OF BAHAMAS THESE NOTES ARE LEGAL TENDER UNDER THE CENTRAL BANK OF BAHAMAS ACT 1974 FOR THE PAYMENT OF ANY AMOUNT THREE DOLLARS Governor $3 |
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| Comments |
The Bahamian $3 note is one of the few surviving examples of that denomination anywhere in the world — a deliberate choice by the Central Bank to accommodate the country's prevailing hotel and casino tipping culture, where a three-dollar bill was genuinely more practical than breaking a five. Most countries that experimented with the denomination quietly abandoned it; the Bahamas kept it.
De La Rue printed the series to a high specification, but the $3 remained the oddity of the issue — handled heavily in tourist environments and correspondingly difficult to find in better grades today.