Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
5 Piastres
| Issuer | Banque de l'Indochine |
|---|---|
| Year | 1932 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 5 Piastres (5 ICFP) |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | A classical allegorical female figure in three-quarter view at left, wearing a laurel-and-wheat wreath helmet and a draped robe, holding a lance and olive branch, engraved in intaglio style by Sébastien Laurent. The denomination CINQ PIASTRES appears in large letterpress at top centre, flanked by ornamental floral vignettes, with serial number and check letter at upper and lower margins. The issuer name BANQUE DE L'INDOCHINE is inscribed along the lower border, with two manuscript signatures above it and a legal warning text in French at right. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | A gilded Khmer-style Bodhisattva figure occupies the left portion of the design, rendered in fine intaglio engraving with elaborate crown and jewelled ornaments. To the right stands a detailed vignette of the Bayon temple at Angkor Thom, its towers carved with multiple serene faces of Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. Chinese characters appear at upper right, and the Vietnamese denomination inscription runs along the lower border panel. |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Banque de l'Indochine's 5 Piastres notes of this period circulated across a colonial currency zone spanning Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and to varying degrees the French concessions in China — a single instrument serving wildly different local economies. The engraving work by Sébastien Laurent, executed at the Banque de France's workshops in Paris, reflects the same intaglio standards applied to metropolitan French issues of the same decade.
Pick 53 belongs to a run produced before the Japanese occupation fundamentally disrupted Indochinese monetary arrangements in the early 1940s. Notes from this 1932 series that show genuine circulation wear from Indochina rather than sitting unissued in reserve are considerably harder to source than their face availability suggests.