Description and research notes
The highest-graded Bradbury Wilkinson specimen of its era and the terminal link in New Zealand’s pre-Reserve Bank lineage. This £5 (Pick S227bs, With Serial Prefix) was printed in London by Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. during the 1916–1920 wartime contract period. Certified PMG 65 EPQ Gem Uncirculated — the sole Top Pop among all eleven recorded 1916–20 £5 variants — it represents the definitive benchmark for the type.
Engraved with exceptional depth and precision, the note retains the established BNZ format: Māori chieftain and youth at right, a coastal vignette at left, and a central guilloche medallion framing the denomination. Its rose-orange and green tint reflects the late Bradbury Wilkinson palette of the WWI decade, while the reverse’s blue-green interlace captures the firm’s technical peak.
Archival evidence confirms its internal audit provenance: dual live serials 7/180001–7/220000 indicate a numbered production control range; a perforated 'CANCELLED' across the signature panel marks it as an audit withdrawal; and the pencilled notation '073430 29.9.17' atop the margin corresponds to the printer’s press-balance log for September 1917. PMG’s “Printer’s Annotation” comment documents this feature.
Only three examples of this catalog number are recorded, none higher. As both the finest surviving £5 of the 1916–20 issue and the top-graded Bradbury Wilkinson specimen of its year, it closes the 45-year BNZ color lineage that began with the 1870 £1 Green and culminated in this wartime masterpiece.