A 161-year-old Hong Kong five-dollar banknote – the earliest known fully issued banknote of any denomination for Hong Kong – sold for 161,200 pounds sterling (US$220,795), including a 24% buyer’s premium, at London-based auction house Dix Noonan Webb on Thursday (August 26). It had been estimated to fetch 30,000-50,000 pounds.

The consignor was unsure how it arrived in the United Kingdom, but it is believed that it came back to the UK in the late 1800s, probably with a British person working or travelling in the Far East, and lay undiscovered for over 150 years.

Bought by a collector in Hong Kong, the note was issued by the Oriental Bank Corporation – the first bank to open a branch in Hong Kong. It is dated June 1 1860, and has the serial number 20465. It bears the signature of the manager, John McDouall, on the right side and the accountant, James Webster, on the left, with a Royal Coat of Arms at upper centre. The only other issued notes from the Oriental Bank Corporation to have survived are dated 1866 and 1879, three of which are in private collections, and several others in institutions.

Throughout its history, the bank had its head office in London and a sizeable branch in Edinburgh, Dix Noonan Webb notes. The majority of its court of directors were Scottish, along with a great many of its senior overseas staff.

Andrew Pattison, head of the banknote department at Dix Noonan Webb, comments: “We are delighted with the superb result achieved for this incredibly important banknote. This is the highest price ever achieved at auction for a Hong Kong banknote and the fact that it is returning to its country of origin is particularly gratifying. One can only imagine what John McDouall and James Webster, the two men who signed the note in 1860, would make of this!”

The Oriental Bank was an evolution of an earlier institution, the Bank of Western India, which was founded in 1842. It expanded quickly, opening branches all over India and Southeast Asia, and was renamed The Oriental Bank. Following the acquisition of the Bank of Ceylon in 1850, the bank was granted a Royal Charter and was renamed the Oriental Bank Corporation in 1851. By the mid-1850s the bank had over 20 branches, with some as far afield as New Zealand, California, and Mauritius, most of which were issuing banknotes.

The Oriental Bank was the first bank to open a branch in Hong Kong. It was the only bank to issue notes there until 1858, when the Mercantile Bank of India, London & China opened its doors. This was rapidly followed by several other banks in the mid-1860s but by this time the Oriental Bank Corporation was the pre-eminent exchange bank, and banknote issuer in the region, with a paid-up capital of over 1,500,000 pounds. Following several financial disasters in the 1870s, the bank ceased trading in 1884. Although it was reformed as the New Oriental Bank Corporation, this too failed, and the bank finally closed its doors in 1892.

Starting in 1846, the Oriental Bank was the first bank to issue notes in Hong Kong, although no examples are thought to have survived. The auctioned note is of a type that was issued between 1851 and 1865. Interestingly, it was issued in 1860, the same year that Kowloon was officially ceded to the British at the Convention of Peking, following the Second Opium War.