Bank notes

The highest denomination note issued by the Bank of England, this £1000 banknote is a rare survivor of a limited run that was cut short as the Nazis tried to destabilise the British economy.

The big question at David Lay’s auctioneers in Penzance next week: Are these bonds worth a few hundred pounds or up to £3.6m each?

It has a face value of ten shillings but a price tag of Aus$3.5m (£2.3m) at Coinworks, the specialist dealers and auctioneers of Melbourne.

Recent years have seen a massive increase in the offerings and prices realised by banknotes.

AFTER 2010 saw the London market grow by a third it would have been a bold commentator to predict a further substantial rise in 2011. Nonetheless, coins and medals auctions in the capital saw totals rise by almost a quarter on the previous year.

FROM 30 June, the £20 banknote carrying the portrait of composer Sir Edward Elgar is to be finally withdrawn from circulation.

FROM May 1913, the first distinctive Commonwealth of Australia banknotes were issued. They were controversial in that no portrait of the reigning monarch, George V, was included in the design.

MORE than a year after his county court victory against Royal Mail, coins and banknotes dealer Bruce Goulborn is taking them to court again.

Today Robert Baden-Powell is best known as the founder of the Boy Scout movement in 1908, but in the Edwardian era his name was synonymous with the Boer War, and specifically the 217 wretched days from October 1899 to May 1900.

A Bank of England £1m Treasury note sold at Spink on October 1 for £68,000.

Spink are to offer a £1m Treasury Note. Dated London 30 August 1948, and printed with the red serial number 000008, it is one of only two surviving examples from the nine thought to have been printed in connection with the Marshall Plan.

This $1000 Straits Settlement bill was described by Spink specialist Barnaby Faull as “the holy grail of Asian Pacific banknotes” after it had sold for Sin$420,000 (£180,000) plus buyer’s premium in Singapore on July 5.

ATG's pioneering live bidding service went East on August 31 - participating in the sale of Oriental and Asian Coins, Medals, and Banknotes conducted in Hong Kong by Baldwin's in association with MA Tak Wo Numismatic Co. Ltd of Hong Kong and Monetarium Pte Ltd of Singapore.

All Bank of England banknotes issued prior to the early 1800s are rare but the note, pictured here, dated 30 August 1705, is believed to be the oldest in private hands.

Hidden away in a bank vault for over 80 years, the fabled Damon Collection of rare coins, medals and bank notes will fall under the hammer in March.

The specialist British sale held by Spink (15% buyer’s premium) on May 5 consisted exclusively of the collection formed by Samuel King.

DURING an otherwise routine probabe valuation in a village near Saffron Walden, John Foster from Stansted Mountfitchet auctioneers Sworders discovered a box of coins tucked away in the back of a cupboard. On closer inspection he found an album of East Anglian banknotes which had probably been collected in the 1950s and 1960s for only a few pounds.

The Free Society of Traders in Pennsilvania (sic) was chartered in England by William Penn as proprietor of the Province of Pennsylvania, in March 1682, a few months before his departure to America.

Of all the western mining states, Arizona conceivably had the largest number of land scams. Companies with no intention of mining were set up only to collect money from investors. Arizona was an ideal place for scams, because it lacked a major transportation system and was subject to attack by neighbouring Apache tribes, so investors were less likely to visit their investments.