The E-Sylum:  Volume 10, Number 4, January 28, 2007, Article 23

THE SHANGHAI BANK MUSEUM AND THE AMERICAN BANK NOTE SPECIMEN ALBUMS

Mark Tomasko writes: "I noticed in last week's piece on the rare 1858
Hong Kong bank note that mention was made of the sale in 2003 of
American Banknote (sic) Company Chinese bank note specimen albums.
Readers may be interested to know that those albums (sold in the 1990
archive sales at Christie's) were purchased in 2003 by the Industrial
and Commercial Bank of China (Shanghai Branch)'s Shanghai Bank Museum,
which, remarkably, published them, every page, in full color, in three
volumes entitled "Chinese Specimens Printed by the American Bank Note
Company," 2004, published by the Old China Hand Press (Hong Kong).

"The Shanghai Bank Museum is high up in the Industrial and Commercial
ank's tower in the Pudong area of Shanghai. (I don't think it's open
to the public, but many school groups and other groups visit it). It
is a very good museum with a wide range of bank notes and all kinds
of banking memorabilia and photos.

"When my wife and I visited the Museum in 2004 (we had previously met
the curator at the ICOMON conference in 2002), it was amusing to see
one of the albums, which I had looked at fourteen years earlier at
Christie's. The published set of books pictures everything in the
albums, but there is little information given beyond the quantities
printed and a one paragraph summary of each bank.

"The Chinese scenes appearing on the American Bank Note currency from
1909-1949 is one of the more interesting series of etchings done at
American, and I will write them up some day. The men who did this
beautiful work have never gotten credit for it, but they will."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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