50 Dollars

The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1853 and operated as one of the principal exchange banks across British commercial routes from Calcutta to Hong Kong. Its banknotes circulated in treaty ports and colonial trading hubs where no single sovereign currency dominated — meaning these notes functioned less as national tender and more as instruments of mercantile credit between major trading houses.

Batho, Sprague & Co. produced security printing for several British overseas banking concerns in the late nineteenth century, though they operated in the shadow of better-known firms like Perkins Bacon and De La Rue. A $50 denomination at this date would have been a high-value instrument, far beyond everyday retail use — the kind of note settled between counting houses, not across shop counters.