Collection PL

Australia 1900 - Bank of New South Wales £20 Sydney Circular Note Specimen (Pick Unlisted)

The reverse is fully printed as a blank demand draft and forms an essential part of the circular-note mechanism. It provides for payment "On demand" to the order of the named party and repeats the value as £20 Stg. and "TWENTY POUNDS Sterling value received." Blank fields were provided for the place and date of execution, again using the printed "19__" date format. Read more →

Mauritius 1839 - Mauritius Commercial Bank 20 Dollars / 4 Pounds Sterling Issued & Cancelled Note (Pick S125)

One of the earliest surviving issued notes of the Mauritius Commercial Bank-the oldest banking institution in the Indian Ocean-this 1839 Twenty Dollar / Four Pounds Sterling note is a foundational artifact of Mauritian monetary history. Issued only one year after the bank’s founding in 1838, it belongs to the first generation of fully functional colonial paper money used on the island. These early issues circulated at a time when coin shortages were severe, and private banknotes became the primary medium of exchange for merchants, plantation owners, and shipping houses. Read more →

Australia 1890 - Bank of New South Wales £10 Brisbane Circular Note Specimen (Pick Unlisted)

Together, the face instructions, Letter of Indication reference, signature-verification procedure, London exchange provision, reverse demand draft, perforated specimen treatment, and watermark security paper preserve the complete operating structure of a late 19th-century Bank of New South Wales circular note. Pick Unlisted, this Brisbane £10 specimen is recorded here as R9 Extremely Rare, with this example representing the only known specimen of the exact form. Read more →

Australia 1900 - Bank of New South Wales £10 London Circular Note Specimen (Pick Unlisted)

Specimen status is recorded through a perforated SPECIMEN cancellation at the lower right of the face. The note remains fully unissued, with the operational fields blank and the Accountant and Manager lines unsigned. Read more →

Australia 1890 - Bank of New South Wales £10 Melbourne Circular Note Specimen (Pick Unlisted)

This £10 Sterling Circular Note specimen was prepared for The Bank of New South Wales at Melbourne for use within the bank's international traveler-payment system. The face carries the Melbourne office designation and the printed open date field "18__", placing the form within the bank's 19th-century circular-note series. Read more →

Poland 1936 - 50 Zlotych Jan Henryk Dąbrowski (Pick 78a, Miłczak 77a–b)

The 50 Zlotych note dated 11 November 1936 with the portrait of General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski represents the highest artistic and symbolic achievement of Polish interwar banknote design. Conceived as the flagship denomination of a fully modernized Bank Polski series, it was intended to embody state continuity, national identity, and technical excellence at a moment when the Second Polish Republic had reached institutional maturity. Read more →

New Zealand 1895–1915 - Bank of New Zealand £5 Orange Specimen (Pick S192s)

Surviving examples of the S192s specimen type remain extremely scarce, with most archival copies destroyed or lost during transitions in banking structure and currency authority. Positioned between the one pound green (Pick S191s) and the ten pounds brown (Pick S193s), this five pounds orange specimen completes the central triad of New Zealand’s most important pre-Reserve Bank engraved series, representing both artistic and technical maturity within early banknote production. Read more →

New Zealand 1870–1890 - Bank of New Zealand £1 Green Specimen (Pick S191s)

The one pound green sits at the foundation of the Bank of New Zealand’s chromatic denomination system, later expanded by the five pounds orange (Pick S192s) and ten pounds brown (Pick S193s). This structured denomination-color mapping became the defining framework of the BNZ color lineage, later influencing early Reserve Bank design logic following centralization in 1934. Read more →

New Zealand 1905-1916 - Bank of New Zealand £1 Red with Serial Number Prefix G000001-G100000 Cancelled Perforation Specimen (Pick S212bs)

The presence of live production serial numbers with the letter prefix G clearly distinguishes this class from unnumbered file specimens. The perforated CANCELLED across the signature panel confirms archival invalidation of a fully completed, final-design note rather than a proof or presentation pull. Specimens of this type preserve the finished design together with the actual serial logic employed in production. Read more →

New Zealand 1905-1916 - Bank of New Zealand £1 Red with Serial Number Prefix G100001-G300000 Cancelled Perforation Specimen (Pick S212bs)

This cancelled variant represents the second major production block of the BNZ £1 Red sequence. Surviving examples from this middle G-prefix range are scarcer than the opening block and provide critical evidence of how Bradbury Wilkinson structured its production ranges during late-WWI contracts. Read more →

New Zealand 1905–1916 - Bank of New Zealand £1 Red Cancelled Specimen with Serial Number Prefix E300001–E400000 (Pick S212bs)

As the final documented prefix block of the BNZ £1 Red series, this specimen represents the end of New Zealand’s private-banknote era and is properly classified as R8 Extremely Rare. Read more →

New Zealand ND (1924-1933) - Bank of New South Wales Ten Shillings with Perforated SPECIMEN Printers Archival Proof (Pick S161s)

As a museum grade research artifact, this proof embodies several converging narratives. It illustrates London based contract engraving for colonial and dominion banks, the trans Tasman operational identity of the Bank of New South Wales, and the use of perforated control markings as an internal security and archival mechanism within early twentieth century banknote production. Rather than serving as a monetary instrument, this piece functions as documentary evidence of how colonial banking institutions planned, approved, and archived designs that in some cases never reached the public. Read more →