Spink hosted another of its bank note charity auctions at its London headquarters on Nov. 29, this time on behalf of NatWest Group, the banking and insurance holding company based in Edinburgh.

The auction was codenamed FLORA, after the Scottish education campaigner and pioneer Flora Stevenson, who appears on the Royal Bank of Scotland £50 polymer notes being sold in the auction. 

Proceeds from the auction went to the Trussell Trust, an organization established in 1997 with the objective of ending reliance on emergency food banks in the United Kingdom. Over 1,300 food banks are organized by the trust, with recent figures showing that 320,000 people have turned to them during the last six months of 2022.

Spink has hosted Scottish bank note charity auctions since 2007.

A large part of this sale comprised polymer notes issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland. The auction totaled 278 lots. The leading lot, at £3,500 ($4,230), was a previously folded Royal Bank of Scotland specimen sheet of 45 polymer £20 notes dated 27 MAY 2019 with serial number AA000000. The purple and pale red notes feature the Scottish entrepreneur Catherine “Kate” Cranston at the right with a view of her famous Cranston’s “Tea Rooms” in the background. The back has two red squirrels and an excerpt from “Cupid and Venus” by Mark Alexander Boyd.

Most of the other lots realized from £100 to £500. This sale was the first where Spink was able to include Northern Irish bank notes in its event, as it included £5, £10, £20, and £50 notes from Ulster Bank, as well as a selection of older English and Scottish notes.

A second session of 175 lots was held on Dec. 16 with other Royal Bank of Scotland issues dating as far back as 1992.

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