REVIEW: WORLD BANKNOTES: 30 NOVEMBER

“The most exciting banknote to come to market anywhere in the world this year.” That is how Noonans’ Head of Banknotes, Andrew Pattison, described the 1941 portrait 100 Fils of King Faisal II of Iraq offered in this sale.

The £100,000 hammer price, paid by a lifetime collector or Iraqi banknotes, fully justified the comment.

 

The specimen 100 Fils dated from 1941, had the serial number O/00 000000 and was decorated with a portrait of King Faisal II as a young boy.

Consigned by the family of Mr Abraham Elkabir (sometimes known as Ibrahim El-Kabir), Accountant-General of Iraq from 1927 until 1934, and Director-General of the Ministry of Finance for long periods thereafter, the note had never been on the market before.

“It is an almost mythical banknote; it had never been offered at auction before and is unlikely to ever come up again,” said Andrew Pattison. “The note was issued for a matter of weeks and only a single low-grade example is believed to have survived. For dedicated collectors of Iraq, this auction represented the only chance to complete the Iraq series once and for all.” 

A specimen 50 Fils from 1944 with the serial number A000000, consigned by the same vendor, took £50,000 against an estimate of £30,000-40,000.

The sale also included the first major part of the Peter Holland Collection – a superb group of world notes from China, Hyderabad, Ceylon, and Sweden, as well South Africa. Many of these notes had not appeared in auction anywhere for well over a decade. 

The highest denomination and rarest Swedish note ever produced sold here for £17,000. From the Sveriges Riksbank in Sweden, the 10,000 Kronor note dated from 1939 to a major world banknotes collector from Eastern Europe. As Andrew Pattison explained: “When this note was issued, it was worth the equivalent of four kilograms of solid gold and would easily have purchased an average house.”