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1 Pound
| Issuer | Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London & China, Colombo |
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| Year | 1864-1869 |
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| Composition | Cotton paper |
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| Obverse description | The obverse is printed in blue on white cotton paper and carries the heading CEYLON BRANCH at the top within a fine guilloche border. At centre-top, the Royal Arms vignette is flanked on either side by the word ONE within ornamental panels, with bilingual Tamil inscriptions (Sinhala and Tamil scripts) appearing to the left and right respectively. The main body bears the printed text THE CHARTERED MERCANTILE BANK OF INDIA, LONDON & CHINA in bold letterpress, followed by a manuscript-style promise-to-pay clause naming KANDY as the place of payment, with ONE POUND in large display type; the word SPECIMEN is overprinted diagonally in red-brown across the lower portion, and spaces for Entd., Account, and MANAGER signatures are ruled at the foot. |
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| Reverse description | The reverse is printed entirely in blue and presents a plain, uncluttered layout typical of trial or specimen issues. A large central oval guilloche medallion dominates the field, flanked symmetrically on each side by a circular guilloche rosette bearing the numeral 1 at its centre. The background is formed by a fine engine-turned lathe-work pattern, and a faint SPECIMEN overprint in red-brown is visible through the paper from the obverse. |
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The Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China was one of the British overseas exchange banks operating under Royal Charter, and its Colombo branch issued notes in the 1860s to serve Ceylon's export trade — principally coffee at that point, before leaf blight destroyed the industry in the following decade. Ceylon had no local central bank and the colonial monetary environment was largely managed through these chartered institutions competing for commercial business.
P#118K is among the rarest survivals from this issuer. The Colombo branch series is catalogued but almost entirely absent from the auction record, likely because most branch notes were retired through the bank's own clearing rather than accumulating in private hands.