The Board of Commissioners of Currency, Singapore, was established in 1967 following the Currency Interchangeability Agreement with Malaysia and Brunei — an arrangement that collapsed almost immediately, with Malaysia withdrawing in 1967 and the three-nation common currency scheme effectively dead by 1973. This note was issued into that turbulent transitional period, when Singapore was building monetary infrastructure from scratch as a newly independent state barely two years old at the series' launch.
At S$1,000, this was the highest denomination in the Orchid series. Thomas De La Rue's production quality was consistent throughout the series, but notes of this value saw overwhelmingly interbank and commercial use rather than retail circulation, which accounts for the relative difficulty in finding genuinely circulated examples today.
The Board of Commissioners of Currency, Singapore, was established in 1967 following the Currency Interchangeability Agreement with Malaysia and Brunei — an arrangement that collapsed almost immediately, with Malaysia withdrawing in 1967 and the three-nation common currency scheme effectively dead by 1973. This note was issued into that turbulent transitional period, when Singapore was building monetary infrastructure from scratch as a newly independent state barely two years old at the series' launch.
At S$1,000, this was the highest denomination in the Orchid series. Thomas De La Rue's production quality was consistent throughout the series, but notes of this value saw overwhelmingly interbank and commercial use rather than retail circulation, which accounts for the relative difficulty in finding genuinely circulated examples today.