Private Bank Issues

Lot 2664    SESSION 9 - 4.30PM Wednesday 30 July    Private Bank Issues

Estimate $6,000
Bid at live.noble.com.au
SOLD $6,500

THE COMMERCIAL BANK OF AUSTRALIA LIMITED, Melbourne, Victoria, one pound uniface, specimen note dated /18, numbered A800001 - A850000, unsigned, on paper, unwatermarked, floral lined frame around with Chinese script on each side, no imprint but perforated 'SPECIMEN B.W & Co LONDON' in lower field, vignette in centre of seated female on wharf, with globe and winged caduceus, and ornamental oval tablet with '£1' lower left, on upper right and left 'ONE', states below, 'I Promise to pay the Bearer on Demand the Sum of One Pound here Value received Melbourne For the Commercial Bank of Australia Limited', with brown 'ONE POUND' across centre, brown and black on white, (Vort-Ronald, comments on bank and type p.133-5, similar unissued note illustrated for £100, Fig. 140 [p.133], MVR 1). About uncirculated and extremely rare with few of this bank appearing in auctions over the last 15 years.

The Commercial Bank of Australia was founded in 1866 in Melbourne and originally concentrated on small business and on farming. It was a successful bank which gradually expanded by taking over other smaller and unsuccessful banks such as the Australian and European Bank in 1879, part of Commercial Bank of South Australia in 1885, The Mercantile Bank of Sydney in 1891 and the National Bank of Tasmania in 1918. It opened branches in New Zealand in 1912. The bank was suspended in 1893 on April 5, but it was reconstructed and re-opened on May 6. The bank in 1981 merged with the Bank of New South Wales to form Westpac, making it at the time the largest bank in Australia. Notes from this bank are particularly rare. The bank was the only Australian Bank to include inscriptions in Chinese on the banknote (probably as claimed that a prominent Chinese businessman on the first Board, recognised the potential of the large minority of the overall population who were migrants from China). The text in Chinese translates as 'One Pound New Gold Mountain', (the Chinese name for Melbourne, as San Francisco had been translated into Chinese as Gold Mountain at the time of the Californian Gold Rush a few years earlier).