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 Tiao Yuan Heng Li Empire private bank issue

Issuer Yuan Heng Li (元亨利) Private Bank
Year 1913
Type Log in to see details
Value Log in to see details
Currency Log in to see details
Composition Log in to see details
Size 185 × 105 mm
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 Green decorative border with floral and geometric guilloche over a yellow underprint. The issuer name 元亨利 appears in large red brush-script characters at centre, with the bank's full title in smaller characters along the upper margin. The denomination text and serial number fields are rendered in red letterpress, with date fields (民國年月日) arranged vertically at left and a serial reference column at right.
Obverse lettering 歷巴東鄉北鄉李官莊
元亨利
認票不認人
憑票發兌銅元參串文
字第號
民國年月日

計銅元壹百四十七枚
Reverse description Log in to see details
Reverse lettering Log in to see details
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

Yuan Heng Li was one of the so-called "qianzhuang" — traditional Chinese private money shops operating in the interstices of the formal banking system. These institutions issued their own notes backed by nothing more than local reputation and whatever silver reserves they chose to maintain, entirely outside the nominal regulatory reach of the newly established Republic. The 1913 date places this note in the chaotic transitional year immediately following the Xinhai Revolution, when the Qing monetary framework had collapsed but the Republic's banking infrastructure had not yet filled the gap.

Survival rate for qianzhuang notes of this period is extremely low. Most were redeemed and destroyed by the issuing house itself, and any institution that failed — as enormous numbers did between 1912 and 1916 — left its outstanding notes worthless and usually discarded.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE