Lot 58
Unlisted. Like Renniks# 509a
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Provenance:
- Ex estate of (M) John Phillips, the Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank of Australia & possibly Unique Notes:
- In 1988 Australia celebrated its Bi-Centennial with the issue of its first polymer banknote in the form of a ten dollar featuring on one side an Aborigine representing the original inhabitants, and on the other side the scene of the Arrival of the First Fleet of white settlers. Shortly before the official release of the notes the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia held its regular monthly meeting at its headquarters in Sydney to discuss the economic issues of the day, and each of its twelve members was presented with a specimen of the new note. What was unusual about these specimens was that they did not follow the usual protocol of bearing a First Prefix - AAOO followed by 'six zeros'. It was subsequently revealed by a staff member that on the day the notes were to be presented to the Board the official specimen notes were nowhere to be found, as someone at Note Printing Australia (Melbourne) had forgotten to send them up to Sydney. In panic, a staff member was sent downstairs to the vault to retrieve twelve circulation notes with ordinary serials which were duly stamped SPECIMEN and presented to the Board members. As confirmation of this happening, two of these notes belonging to Board members Sir Peter Abeles and Bernie Fraser have since made it into the marketplace. What was not known until now was that the issue of these irregular specimens was not a one-off occurrence. Possibly at the same Board meeting there had been discussion about replacing the existing Gothic serial numbers on Australian Fifty Dollar notes with computer readable OCR-B serials, which in fact did occur later in 1988. This would explain the existence of the SPECIMEN Johnson - Fraser Fifty Dollar note with Gothic serials found in the estate of the Reserve Bank Board member (M) John Phillips. This note like the batch of Bi-Centennial Ten Dollar specimens bore ordinary serial numbers, and to date it is the only specimen note of this type to surface. Condition:
- O(riginal) P(aper) Q(uality)
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