5 Pounds - George VI Brown

Bermuda's wartime currency situation was genuinely complicated. The 1941 issues were produced under emergency conditions, with sterling-linked Bermudian notes serving a colony that had become strategically vital to Allied operations — Bermuda was the base for British censorship of transatlantic mail and a key staging point for the destroyers-for-bases agreement of 1940. A five-pound note in that environment was serious money, more likely to sit in a government cashbox than pass through civilian hands.

Bradbury Wilkinson's New Malden facility handled security printing throughout the war despite the obvious risks of production in wartime Britain. Pick 12 is among the scarcer Bermuda issues of the period, with relatively few examples known outside institutional holdings.