5 Dollars

The Bank of Hamilton was chartered in 1872 to serve the commercial needs of a city that had just lost the provincial capital to Toronto and was determined to build financial infrastructure to compensate. It remained an independent Ontario chartered bank until 1923, when the Canadian Bank of Commerce absorbed it — one of the consolidations that quietly ended the era of smaller regional charters in Canada.

The British American Bank Note Company had established its Montreal operation in 1866, and by the 1880s held the bulk of Canadian chartered bank printing contracts. Their work on Hamilton's issues from this period is technically accomplished, with tight geometric lathe work that was state of the art for anti-counterfeiting at the time.

Pick 447 is the standard reference, but surviving examples in any grade are infrequently encountered at auction.