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100 Dollars
| Issuer | Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London & China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1860-1889 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Intaglio-printed note in black on white paper, with a dense ornamental border incorporating Chinese, Jawi, and Tamil script legends. The British Royal coat of arms with lion and unicorn supporters occupies the upper centre, inscribed with the motto DIEU ET MON DROIT and encircled by the legend INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER. Denomination numerals '100' appear in oval cartouches at upper left and upper right, flanked by the branch name 'Penang' in script lettering and vertical Chinese denomination characters, with the promise-to-pay text set within a fine guilloche underprint panel in the lower half. Signature lines for Entd., Acct., and Manager appear at foot, with a SPECIMEN overprint at lower right. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Reverse printed on plain white paper, entirely unprinted on its own face but showing a strong blind offset impression of the obverse design through the paper, including the mirrored text of the promise-to-pay panel, the denomination cartouches, and the ornamental border, consistent with the intaglio letterpress production method of Perkins, Bacon & Co. |
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| Comments |
The Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1857, one of several British overseas banks positioned to service trade flows across the eastern route — Bombay, Calcutta, Shanghai, Hong Kong. The dollar-denominated notes were issued for Hong Kong circulation, where the bank maintained a branch competing directly against the Oriental Bank Corporation and, later, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
Perkins, Bacon produced the plates using their steel-engraving intaglio process, the same technology they applied to postage stamps — including the Penny Black. Notes of this type in any surviving condition are genuinely rare; the bank went into voluntary liquidation in 1893, and remaining stock was almost certainly destroyed.