Elizabeth portraits theme of May auction by Dix Noonan Webb

London’s Dix Noonan Webb is holding a 500-lot auction of bank notes, featuring 500 portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, on Tuesday, May 31. The auction will feature bank notes from all corners of the Commonwealth, with examples from every country with a note on which a portrait of the queen has appeared.

Images courtesy of Dix Noonan Webb.

London’s Dix Noonan Webb will be holding a 500-lot auction of bank notes, featuring 500 portraits of Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday, May 31. The “Platinum Jubilee Collection” is offered to coincide with the queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, which will begin on Thursday, June 2, and will continue over the weekend until June 5.

Thomasina Smith of DNW’s banknote department remarked: “We are delighted to be holding this sale to coincide with the celebrations for The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. No other monarch has featured on such a wide range of notes from such a huge range of countries. Not only do they depict her through all 70 years of her reign, but stylistically they are a wonderful works of art showing the progression and history of the banknote.”

All corners of the Commonwealth

The auction will feature bank notes from all corners of the Commonwealth with examples from every country on which the portrait of the queen has appeared, including New Zealand, Cyprus, Fiji, and the Falklands. To commemorate the historic nature of the sale, each bank note will be issued with a custom commemorative sale label.

Bank of England

Highlights include a presentation Bank of England £5 note, serial numbered A01 000013, dating from 1971 and housed in a leather wallet. This was presented to Sir Jasper Quintus Hollom (Dec. 16, 1917, to Aug. 29, 2014), who was chief cashier of the Bank of England from 1962 to 1966 and then deputy governor of the Bank of England from 1970 to 1980. It is expected to sell in the area of £5,000 to £6,500.

Included in the auction is the first note with a portrait of the queen, a 5-shilling note issued in Bermuda, and dated Oct. 20, 1952, the year of her accession. It is estimated at £500.

Also offered is a 10-shilling note from the Bank of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, now Zimbabwe and Botswana, dated May 27, 1957, that carries an estimate of £700.

Other highlights

An important $100 note of the 1980s from Belize is estimated at £1,800; a 1990s era $5 specimen note from Australia is expected to reach at least £1,000; and a $5 note from the British Caribbean Territories, dated 1959, should easily exceed its £1,000 estimate, according to DNW.

The auction catalog is being called a collectors piece in its own right, with full listings for each and every note, alongside complete discussions of every engraved portrait of the queen that has ever appeared on a bank note. This includes details of the jewelry worn and the original photographs that inspired the engravers. Many of the portraits are very famous, and include the Annigoni portrait of 1972 and the Dorothy Wilding photographs of 1952.

Free online bidding is available at www.dnw.co.uk.

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