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5 Pounds
| Issuer | Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London & China, Colombo |
|---|---|
| Year | 1864-1869 |
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| Value | 5 Pounds |
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| Obverse description | Green and brown bicolour note with the heading CEYLON BRANCH. at top centre, flanked by the denomination FIVE in green on both sides within guilloche rosettes. Inscriptions in Sinhalese and Tamil appear above the denominational panels. The centre carries the bank's full title THE CHARTERED MERCANTILE BANK OF INDIA, LONDON & CHINA beneath a Royal Arms vignette with the legend INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER, and a large brown intaglio FIVE POUNDS numeral overprint across the promise text, with KANDY and a partial date 18__ above the text. A bold red SPECIMEN overprint is applied diagonally across the lower centre, with Ent'd, ACCOUNT, and MANAGER designations at the foot. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Plain green back with a large central oval guilloche panel enclosing the numeral 5, flanked on each side by smaller circular guilloche rosettes also bearing the numeral 5, all executed in fine lathe-work engraving. The overall design is uncluttered, relying entirely on the intricate engine-turned geometric patterns for visual effect. Faint mirror-image text from the obverse is visible through the paper along the top edge. |
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| Comments |
The Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China was incorporated under Royal Charter in 1853 and operated across a network of Asian branches dependent on London's capital backing. The Colombo branch served Ceylon's growing export trade — primarily coffee at this point, before the leaf blight of the 1870s devastated the plantations and fundamentally altered the colony's commercial character. A five-pound denomination would have moved between merchants and agency houses, not retailers.
The bank was absorbed into the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China in 1892. Surviving branch notes from any of its Ceylon operations are genuinely rare; most were redeemed or destroyed well before the merger.