Banknote

The most viewed stories on this website over the last week included news of a special 1980s banknote being spotted by eagle-eyed bidders as part of a job lot.

Plastic money has been a bone of contention recently thanks to the strange revelation that the new UK £5 notes include animal fat. But one day the polymer notes will surely be as normal and accepted as the existing paper examples, assuming physical money has not all but disappeared anyway by then.

The excitement around the new polymer fivers, which were launched by the Bank of England last month, helped boost interest in new and old £5 notes for philatelic and numismatic specialists Spink.

Auction specialists in Australia have found a rare Ming Dynasty banknote hidden within a Chinese wooden sculpture. The discovery came at Mossgreen as they were cataloguing the extensive collection of Raphy Star – one of the most important collections of Asian art ever to be offered in the country.

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.

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.

FROM 30 June, the £20 banknote carrying the portrait of composer Sir Edward Elgar is to be finally withdrawn from circulation.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