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50 000 Customs Gold Units
| Issuer | Central Bank of China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1948 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Customs Gold Unit (1930-1948) |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 行銀央中 關 金 伍 萬 圓 印年七十三國民華中 (Translation: Central Bank of China Fifty Thousand Customs Gold Units Printed in the 37th year of the Republic of China) |
| Reverse description | Central vignette of the Central Bank of China headquarters building in Shanghai, rendered in fine intaglio engraving within a guilloche border. The bank name THE CENTRAL BANK OF CHINA is inscribed above the building, and the denomination 50000 FIFTY THOUSAND CUSTOMS GOLD UNITS appears in bold lettering below. Two manuscript signatures of bank officials are placed at the lower portion of the note. |
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| Comments |
The Customs Gold Unit (CGU) was a notional accounting currency the Chinese Nationalist government created in 1930 to collect maritime customs duties, pegged initially to the gold-based U.S. dollar at a fixed rate. By 1948, with hyperinflation consuming the standard fabi at a catastrophic rate, the CGU was briefly monetized as a circulating currency — an attempt to give the public something nominally stable to hold. It failed almost immediately.
The 50,000 CGU denomination is itself a symptom: denominations of this size appeared within months of the series launching, as the parallel Gold Yuan reform also collapsed. The Central Bank's Shanghai printing works was producing emergency runs under conditions of severe institutional breakdown, and the CGU notes were effectively worthless before distribution networks could move them.