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 Rupees
| Issuer | Oriental Bank Corporation, Badulla |
|---|---|
| Year | 1851-1880 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Indian rupee (1835-date) |
| 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 | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse is dominated by a large, intricately engraved circular guilloche rosette centred on the plain paper field, composed of concentric lathe-work rings surrounding six smaller engine-turned medallions arranged symmetrically around a central point, the whole enclosed within a scalloped outer border of fine line-work. The surrounding paper shows faint letterpress underprint text visible through the stock. A small printer's imprint appears at the lower edge of the rosette. |
| Reverse lettering | Perkins Bacon & Petch London |
| 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 |
The Oriental Bank Corporation was a British overseas bank chartered in 1851, operating across India, Ceylon, and the Far East before its spectacular collapse in 1884 — one of the more consequential bank failures in Victorian financial history. Badulla, a hill-country town in Ceylon's Uva Province, was a plantation district center, meaning this note circulated primarily among coffee estate owners, merchants, and colonial administrators rather than any broad retail public.
Perkins, Bacon & Petch were prolific security printers whose intaglio work supplied banknotes and stamps across the British Empire. The same firm printed Ceylon's first postage stamps in the early 1850s, making the overlap in timing with this note series more than coincidental.