5 Pounds

The Commercial Bank of New Brunswick was chartered in 1834 and operated out of Saint John, making it one of the more durable pre-Confederation Maritime institutions. By 1853, the American Bank Note Company — freshly consolidated from several competing New York engraving firms — was the prestige choice for Canadian colonial banks seeking notes that were difficult to counterfeit and visually authoritative.

New Brunswick continued issuing provincial chartered bank notes well after Confederation, but Dominion consolidation of the currency eventually forced institutions like this one to wind down their note-issuing privileges under the Bank Act of 1871. Survivors from the 1853 series are genuinely scarce — Saint John's catastrophic fire of 1877 destroyed financial records and likely whatever redemption stock remained.