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50 Dollars
| Issuer | Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1910 |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Printed in red-brown intaglio on cream cotton paper, the obverse carries the full bank title "THE CHARTERED BANK OF INDIA, AUSTRALIA & CHINA" and the legend "INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER" across the upper register, with the denomination "FIFTY DOLLARS" in large intaglio lettering at centre. The place of issue "HONG KONG" and the manuscript date appear below the central text, flanked by serial numbers at left and right, with Chinese characters in the lateral margins. Two manuscript signatures appear at the foot above the authority legend "BY ORDER OF THE COURT OF DIRECTORS". |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | THE CHARTERED BANK OF INDIA, AUSTRALIA & CHINA INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER $50 FIFTY DOLLARS HONG KONG BY ORDER OF THE COURT OF DIRECTORS 拾伍 貳拾伍 香港 |
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| Comments |
The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China was one of the dominant exchange banks across British colonial trade routes, and its Hong Kong branch notes like this $50 were instruments of commerce rather than everyday currency — handling the kind of transaction volumes that moved between merchants, trading houses, and agency banks, not street-level retail. A $50 denomination in 1910 was a substantial sum; few outside the comprador class or foreign commercial firms would have handled one.
Pick 38 is among the rarer surviving pieces from this issuer's pre-WWI Hong Kong output. The bank merged into Standard Chartered in 1969, at which point institutional archives were significantly thinned.