Lot 2792

Description

The Commercial Bank of Australia Limited, Melbourne, Specimen one pound uniface, not dated, (but date hand written upper left in pencil July 21, 84), numbered No.A750001-A800000, unsifgned, perforated 'Specimen B W & Co London', watermarked, floral lined frame around with Chinese script on each side, imprint of 'Sands & McDougall, Stationers, Melbourne', 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], issued note in Nicholson Collection [lot 1560]). Nearly uncirculated and extremely rare.

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, who 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).