50 Pounds Bank of New Zealand

The Bank of New Zealand was a private trading bank, not a central bank — its right to issue notes derived from its founding legislation of 1861, and by 1929 it remained one of the few private institutions in the British Empire still exercising that privilege at scale. The £50 denomination was never a note for everyday commerce. It moved between businesses, lawyers, and financial institutions, and saw proportionally little handling relative to lower values.

Bradbury Wilkinson printed the entire BNZ series from their New Malden works, and their intaglio security standards were among the tightest available to colonial banks at the time. New Zealand's Reserve Bank Act of 1933 finally ended private note issue in the country, making all surviving BNZ notes from this period — particularly high denominations — casualties of a deliberately closed chapter.