I found this story about a ‘Diseased’ Australian banknotes make £350,000 in early October 2009. The first distinctive Commonwealth of Australia banknotes were issued from May 1913. The banknote were so controversial because it have no portrait of the reigning monarch, George V, in the design. It was also feared that the release of a ten-shilling note (the lowest denomination note issued by any government within the British Empire) would spread disease from the lower to the middle and upper classes.
Rodney Tennant from Tennants auctioner of Leyburn had asked London coins and banknote specialists Spink to sell the six Commonwealth of Australia banknotes – all with early serial numbers and all marked Cancelled. They comprised the offending 10 shillings (serial number M010056), £1 (serial number P008055), £5 (serial number U067927) £20 (serial number X000018), £50 (serial number Y005495) and £100 (serial number Z006944). The three lower denominations are all rarities (all were subject to extensive forging and had been replaced by a different design by 1914), while the £20, £50 and £100 are among just a handful recorded.
Rodney Tennant from Tennants auctioner of Leyburn had asked London coins and banknote specialists Spink to sell the six Commonwealth of Australia banknotes – all with early serial numbers and all marked Cancelled. They comprised the offending 10 shillings (serial number M010056), £1 (serial number P008055), £5 (serial number U067927) £20 (serial number X000018), £50 (serial number Y005495) and £100 (serial number Z006944). The three lower denominations are all rarities (all were subject to extensive forging and had been replaced by a different design by 1914), while the £20, £50 and £100 are among just a handful recorded.
Distribution of the earliest specimen notes was strictly limited – generally to reciprocating government banks, law enforcement agencies including Scotland Yard and major museums within Australia. In 1922 a set was even laid under the foundation stone of the new Commonwealth Bank in Collins Street, Melbourne. Very few ever made it into the hands of private individuals.
Photo of Rodney Tennant by: www.tennants.co.uk
Quite how a superbly preserved set of the full 1913-1914 Commonwealth of Australia issue ended up in a chest of drawers in a North Yorkshire home is unknown. The elderly owner could shed little light on their history; indeed he had been unaware of their existence until he was told by the auctioneer who had cleared his house that a windfall was coming his way.
Spink offered them (in the separate catalogue) as lot number one of their banknotes sale of September 28. They did not quite make their £400,000-450,000 estimate, but the vendor’s family was delighted to learn that they had sold to an Australian private collector at £350,000.
Source by: Roland Arkell
