50 Dollars

The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1853 and operated as one of the principal British exchange banks across Asia, maintaining branches from Shanghai to Singapore and Colombo. Its colonial-era currency issues circulated in a patchwork of territories where no single local authority was empowered to produce notes — the bank filled that vacuum by right of its charter.

The $50 denomination was always a merchant and trading house instrument, not retail currency. High-value Chartered Bank notes rarely wore out in ordinary commerce; most moved between counting houses and were retired quickly, which paradoxically makes circulated survivors rarer than uncirculated ones held in bank vaults.

Pick S124 falls within the pre-nationalization series, before the bank's 1969 merger with Standard Bank to form Standard Chartered.