Australia 1880–1910 - Commercial Bank of Australia £100 Specimen (Pick Unlisted)
The Chinese text was not an incidental decorative feature added to a later issue. It formed part of the Commercial Bank of Australia’s note design from the bank’s establishment in 1866. The winning note design announced in June 1866 specifically incorporated the bank’s name and the denomination in Chinese characters into the border. This was a deliberate commercial distinction aimed at Chinese customers at a time when Chinese merchants, miners, laborers, trading houses, and investors formed an important part of the Victorian economy. Contemporary reporting explicitly connected the Chinese inscriptions with the bank’s desire to attract Chinese depositors, making the notes an early and unusually direct example of financial-product localization and customer acquisition embedded in the currency itself. Read more →
