10 Dollars

The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China held a royal charter originally granted in 1853, and its Hong Kong branch was among the earliest foreign banks operating under formal British banking law in the colony. By 1878, the bank was deeply embedded in the financing of opium, silk, and tea trades moving through treaty ports — these $10 notes would have passed through comprador offices and merchant houses rather than retail commerce.

Surviving 1878-dated examples from this series are genuinely rare. The bank's Hong Kong notes from this period suffered heavy losses in both the 1878 and 1883 financial crises that hit the colony's banking sector, and branch records suggest large quantities of partially-issued stock were destroyed rather than redeemed.