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5 Dollars
| Issuer | Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation |
|---|---|
| Year | 1897-1898 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 香港上海滙豐銀行 THE HONG KONG & SHANGHAI BANKING CORPORATION. Promises to pay the Bearer on demand at its Office here FIVE DOLLARS or the equivalent in the Currency of the Island value received. By Order of the Board of Directors. Chief Acc. Chief Manager. HONG KONG 五圓 Engaved by Barclay & Fry 186 London |
| Reverse description | Printed entirely in rose-red on plain paper, the reverse is dominated by a large central vignette of the bank's heraldic arms set within an elaborate cartouche of intricate scroll and lathe-work, with the numeral '5' repeated in guilloche ovals on each side. The bank's name, 'THE HONG KONG AND SHANGHAI BANKING CORPORATION.', arcs around the upper portion of the central design. |
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| Comments |
Barclay & Fry were a London security printer active in the late nineteenth century, less prominent in the colonial banking note trade than contemporaries like Waterlow or Bradbury Wilkinson, which makes their work for HSBC's 1890s issues relatively uncommon as a pairing. The Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation at this date was privately chartered and operating across a network of Asian treaty ports, issuing its own notes under no central bank authority — a position it would retain well into the twentieth century.
P#139 predates HSBC's later shift to De La Rue for note production. Cotton paper from this period is prone to splitting along fold lines, and examples with intact corners are harder to source than the catalogue frequency might suggest.