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500 Yuan Bank of Central China
| Issuer | Bank of Central China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1946 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Yuan (1946-1949) |
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| Obverse description | Deep red letterpress print on a plain ground. A vignette at right centre shows a steam passenger locomotive hauling a train across an open landscape. The denomination 伍百圓 appears in large Chinese characters at centre within a decorative guilloche oval, with corner denominators reading 伍百. The bank title 華中銀行 is printed in Chinese characters across the top, with the serial number in the upper right field. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Blue letterpress print. The central panel carries a bold guilloche oval enclosing the denomination numeral 500 flanked by the Chinese legend 伍百圓, with the numeral 500 repeated at left and right. An elaborate border of interlocking guilloche patterns and scrollwork frames the design, with two signature panels in manuscript flanking the central vignette. The year 1946 is printed in Western numerals at the base of the central panel. |
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| Comments |
The Bank of Central China was a Communist Party institution established in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region financial network, later extending its note-issuing operations as Liberated Area currencies multiplied in the final years of the Civil War. By 1946, several regional Communist banks were producing parallel currencies simultaneously, creating a deliberately fragmented monetary structure that complicated Nationalist attempts at currency suppression.
The Pick listing splits this issue across two suffixes — S3394A and S3394B — indicating documented printing or paper variants within what is nominally the same emission. Border Region notes of this period are notoriously difficult to authenticate, and contemporary counterfeiting by both Nationalist agents and opportunists was well attested.