1 Dollar

The Bank of British North America was chartered by royal charter in 1836 and operated branches across the British North American colonies — an unusual structure for the period, more akin to a British joint-stock bank than a colonial issuer. This 1838 dollar note comes from the bank's earliest years of operation, before the colonial monetary system had settled into anything resembling coherence.

Perkins, Bacon & Co. in London produced the plates, as they did for a significant portion of early colonial North American paper. The firm's steel-engraving technique was chosen specifically for its anti-counterfeiting properties — a genuine concern in the 1830s colonies, where crude local forgeries circulated alongside legitimate notes with some regularity.

Pick S311 survivors from this early issue are genuinely uncommon.