5 Pounds Northern Bank

The Northern Banking Company Limited was one of the old Ulster provincial banks that survived into the Free State period largely intact. By 1929 it was already operating under the shadow of consolidation — it would be absorbed into the Midland Bank group's Northern Bank structure in 1965, but in the late 1920s it still issued its own notes under the currency provisions that allowed pre-existing Irish banks to continue note-issuing rights after partition.

Pick 171 is genuinely scarce. High-denomination provincial Irish notes from this period had limited circulation outside commercial and banking channels, and survival rates reflect that — most examples that do surface show heavy use or have been punch-cancelled by the bank itself upon redemption.