ORGANISING YOUR COLLECTION

There are loads of way to organise your collection of banknotes. most will depend on why you are collecting. I organise my one by country a-z but you could use subject or denomination for instance.

By subject could be :

ANIMALS

the above are from Antarctica, Congo democratic republic and Belarus

or BIRDS

from Singapore, Suriname and Zambia

or Women on banknotes ( not very many of them)

from Slovakia, Luxembourg, Italy and The Czech Republic

but of course there is one woman who are on loads of notes. Bahamas, Bermuda, British Honduras, Cayman Islands, Canada, Jersey, New Zealand, Australia, St Helena, Hong Kong, Gibraltar, jersey, Fiji, Falkland islands, Eastern Caribbean States, and of course Great Britain all have Queen Elizabeth II on their notes:

Other Possibles could be  Buildings, Revolutionaries , Presidents, Kings, Queens, Jobs or you could list them as you find them !!!

Finally you could list them by denomination;

Bolivars from Venezuela and Bolivia

Dollar from 30 countries from Australia to Zimbabwe

I think the rule here is that there are no rules 

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS

Now, I've been waiting to get this note for ages and everytime i saw it on ebay it went for crazy prices and then i found it right here on my doorstep at Robert Murray's Stamp Shop and had a good blether about the Independence referendum as well. I managed to get this and the previous two notes as well as some accessories too. so i was well chuffed!!

This note is the 10 Cents note from the Straits Settlements, a group of British Territories which included Singapore, Malacca, Dinding and Penang. The note is from 1919. The Straits settlements was in existence from 1826 until 1946, first as a British colony, then under Japanese occupation during WWII. After the war Singapore became independent and the others joining the Malayan union which became modern day Malaysia.

MALAYA AND NORTH BORNEO

Now when I saw this note I got excited as I thought it was one I have been looking for but it was British North Borneo I needed. However, I haven't got notes from Malaya and North Borneo so it was still good.  Malaya and North Borneo is not a country but a currency union of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo, Brunei and Riau archipelago. Which lasted from 1953 to 1967

This note is the one dollar note from 1959 which has a sailing boat on the front and another boat and the sheilds of the states on the reverse.

THE CYPRIOT POUND

This is the one pound (£1) from Cyprus issued in 1993. the bank name is in Turkish and Greek on the front and English on the back. The front has a mosaic of a nymph and on the reverse is the abbey at Bellapais .

CHINESE CUSTOM GOLD UNITS

I think these are my favourites from the batch probably because they are printed vertically instead of the more usual horizontal printing.

The top note is the 20 Customs gold units with the issue date as 1930 but these notes were issued right through the 1940's with the 1930 date on them.

similarily the 10 Custom gold units  had the 1930 issue date  through the 1940's too. the 10 cgu note also had 3 different signatures and at the bottom right had two versions - "asst general manager" and " Assistant manager" the one above is the former and i have another one in worse condition with the other one.

Custom Gold Units were primarily used for customs transactions but were issued into general  use too.

THE 2ND BATCH - CHINA NOTES

The next two Chinese notes from the new batch are above and are both 10 Yuan Notes.

The first one was issued by The Bank of Communications in 1935. The bank still operates to this day. It has electricity pylons on the front and what looks like a fortress temple on the reverse.

The second one above is from 1940 and was issued by the Bank of China . It has  Sun Yat-sen on the front and the Temple of Heaven in Beijing on the reverse.

This one stumped me for a while but it just took a bit of reading up to get the details. This note was issued by the Central bank of China in 1945. It has Sun Yat-sen on the front - apart from the photo and the numerals 500 it is in chinese script which made it more difficult to research.

The notes above are the 1 and 2 Jiao note from the 1980 issue described here

THE 1ST BATCH - CENTRAL BANK OF CHINA 1930 AND 1940'S

 I managed to get a pile of Chinese notes from an antiques fair at the weekend and so there are a lot of them, some of them quite interesting, so I will split them up over 3 or 4 posts.

This first lot are all from the Central bank of China and are from the 1930's and 40's. They are all pre - the people's republic as it came into being in 1949.

The first note at the top is the 5 Dollars and was issued from Shanghai in 1930, with Sun Yat-sen on the front and a chinese temple on the back.

The next one is the 10 Yuan from 1936 again with Sun Yat-sen and a temple on the reverse.

The third note is the 20 Yuan from 1948 with Chiang kai-shek on the front and a building on the reverse.

Finally, its the 100 Yuan with sun yat-sen on the front and this is from 1941.