A regular pattern of punched holes applied across the entire note surface, serving as a cancellation method to mark the piece as a trial specimen and render it non-negotiable.
The 300 Gulden denomination is an outlier in Dutch banking history — an unusually large face value produced at a moment when the outbreak of the First World War triggered immediate hoarding of coin and a sudden, intense demand for paper substitutes. The Nederlandsche Bank responded by issuing across multiple denominations in quick succession during late 1914, and the 300 Gulden sat at the upper end of that emergency push.
The cancellation perforations on surviving examples indicate these were officially withdrawn and punched rather than worn out through use — the typical fate of high-denomination notes that were redeemed before seeing meaningful hand-to-hand circulation.
The 300 Gulden denomination is an outlier in Dutch banking history — an unusually large face value produced at a moment when the outbreak of the First World War triggered immediate hoarding of coin and a sudden, intense demand for paper substitutes. The Nederlandsche Bank responded by issuing across multiple denominations in quick succession during late 1914, and the 300 Gulden sat at the upper end of that emergency push.
The cancellation perforations on surviving examples indicate these were officially withdrawn and punched rather than worn out through use — the typical fate of high-denomination notes that were redeemed before seeing meaningful hand-to-hand circulation.