5 Dollars The Chartered Bank

The Chartered Bank — formally the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China until its 1956 renaming — issued this series across a span that coincided with dramatic political change in Hong Kong's hinterland and the steady contraction of its original geographic mandate. By 1959, the bank had effectively retreated to its Hong Kong and Singapore operations as a commercial focus, the grand imperial reach of its title increasingly ornamental.

Thomas De La Rue's production quality on this series is consistent and reliable, though the notes are common enough that surviving examples in high grade attract only modest specialist attention.