Catalog
50 Palestine Pounds Provisional Issue
| Issuer | Anglo-Palestine Bank Limited |
|---|---|
| Year | 1948 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | P#5 |
| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse is printed as a mirror-image offset impression of the obverse text, appearing in pale blue-grey through the paper — a characteristic consequence of the uniface letterpress printing process used for this emergency provisional issue. The text is fully legible in reverse, with the trilingual bank name, denomination, and bearer clause all visible as a ghost underprint across the plain paper surface. |
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| Variants | P#5a - issued note P#5s - Specimen |
| Comments |
The Anglo-Palestine Bank's 50 Pounds provisional issue of 1948 is one of the more historically charged pieces in twentieth-century Levantine paper money. When the British Mandate collapsed and the State of Israel declared independence in May 1948, there was no central bank and no sovereign currency ready to deploy. The Anglo-Palestine Bank — a commercial institution — was pressed into emergency service as a quasi-central monetary authority, issuing these notes as a stop-gap before the Bank of Israel and the Israeli pound could be formally established.
The high denomination made this note rare in ordinary hands. At 50 Pounds, it was not a note the average resident would handle, and surviving circulated examples are genuinely uncommon.