5 Pounds

The City Bank of Sydney had a short and troubled run — it was absorbed into the Bank of New South Wales in 1918, making its note issues relatively short-lived by design. By 1910, private bank currency in Australia was already in structural decline; the Commonwealth Bank had been established by act of parliament in 1911, and the writing was on the wall for trading bank notes as a circulating medium.

Pick A98 is scarce in any condition. High-denomination private bank notes from this period rarely circulated hard — they moved between merchants and clearing houses, and survivors tend to show folding rather than wear. The undated format was common across Australian trading bank issues of the period, with tellers dating notes by hand at the point of issue.