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50 Pounds Bank of New Zealand
| Issuer | Bank of New Zealand |
|---|---|
| Year | 1914-1927 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Vignette at upper left with two Māori figures, flanked by a pair of kiwi birds at lower left amid palm trees with a volcanic peak in the background. A large denomination underprint occupies the centre of the note, with the promise-to-pay inscription and bank title arranged across the face in letterpress. The overall design is executed in a traditional intaglio style characteristic of Bradbury Wilkinson's early twentieth-century colonial issues. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | FIFTY POUNDS BANK OF NEW ZEALAND ON DEMAND WE PROMISE TO PAY TO THE BEARER FIFTY POUNDS STERLING DUNEDIN DAY OF... FIFTY FOR THE BANK OF NEW ZEALAND FIFTY POUNDS |
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| Comments |
The Bank of New Zealand was a private commercial institution at the time of this issue — New Zealand had no central bank until the Reserve Bank was established in 1934. The BNZ held a dominant position in the colonial and early dominion banking system, and its higher-denomination notes like this one functioned almost entirely in interbank settlement and commercial trade, not retail circulation. A fifty-pound note passing through ordinary hands in 1920s New Zealand would have been genuinely unusual.
Bradbury Wilkinson's security printing for Southern Hemisphere issuers during this period is generally of high technical quality, and BNZ specimens from this series do appear in proof archives. Circulated survivors at this denomination are rare — attrition through redemption and destruction was high once the Reserve Bank assumed note-issuing authority.