Description and research notes
Specimen Treasury Bill issued by the Government of Barbados under the authority of the Treasury Bills (Local) Act of 1922, produced for internal reference and administrative control rather than circulation or fiscal settlement.
The document carries a printed denomination of five hundred dollars and defines an obligation payable out of the Consolidated Fund at any commercial bank in Barbados or at the Treasury. The place of issue is identified as Bridgetown, confirming its role within the central administrative framework of the Barbadian state.
This specimen displays an alphanumeric prefix “A” followed by a four-digit zero serial (A0000), distinguishing it from specimen variants produced without prefixes or serial numbers. Prefix-bearing specimens represent a discrete reference configuration within the treasury printing and approval process.
Invalidation is effected solely by perforated lettering spelling the word “CANCELLED,” applied twice in the lower right corner of the note, with one perforated cancellation placed above the other. This perforation-based cancellation permanently invalidates the document while preserving it for reference. No ink stamps, overprints, or additional cancellation methods are present.
Along the upper margin, handwritten archival annotations are present, including a clearly legible date reading “15 NOV 1968,” a signature attribution, and a numerical reference. These markings document an internal handling or approval event and provide a firm temporal anchor for this specimen’s use within government workflow.
The design is executed on a dense multicolor security underprint composed of repeated “Government of Barbados” text, combining issuer identification with anti-counterfeit intent. The engraved guilloche border reflects established British fiscal printing conventions of the mid-twentieth century.
Specimen Treasury Bills of this denomination were produced in strictly limited numbers for government files and printer archives. Surviving examples combining prefix and serial number, double perforated CANCELLED cancellation, and dated handwritten annotations represent a highly specific and rarely encountered configuration within Barbados fiscal material.