HK$100 — One Hundred Dollars
The artwork
Front: Printed in reds and rose, with the bank's name across the top in Chinese characters and in English: The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. At left, a crowned coat of arms with lion and unicorn supporters and the motto DIEU ET MON DROIT, a small harbour vignette of junks beneath it. The promise to pay and ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS sit over a guilloche rosette; the date reads HONGKONG 1st JANUARY 1985. Serial BW643972 twice, single General Manager signature, and a plain octagonal watermark panel at right.
Back: The bank's own headquarters at 1 Queen's Road Central — Norman Foster's steel-and-glass tower, completed the same year this note was dated — drawn in elevation and set in a circular frame. Flanking it, the pair of bronze lions that have crouched outside the bank's door since 1935. At right, a multi-tiered Chinese pagoda in a wooded setting; a matching empty roundel at left for the watermark. Denominations in Arabic numerals and Chinese characters in the corners.
In circulation
Issued from 1985, the first HSBC series to carry the new Foster headquarters, and dated each January through the late 1980s and early 1990s. It gave way in 1993 to the redesigned series built around the bank's lion's-head device and hexagonal logo, which dropped the colonial armorial entirely.
Details
- CurrencyDollar (HK$)
- DenominationOne Hundred Dollars
- Collectedon the Hong Kong journey, 1993
- IssuerThe Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
- SeriesDated 1st January 1985
- SignatureSingle signature, General Manager
- WatermarkLion's head, in the octagonal panel at right