We've been noting the increasing interest of collectors in paper currency in recent years with an excellent example being a Palestinian Currency Board note sold just a few days ago at Spink for $103,000.
What's perhaps a little more unusual is a note which sold just yesterday at Dix Noonan Webb, which was always going to be valuable and rare from the moment it was printed.
This was a £1,000,000 Bank of England ' Treasury ' Note, which related to the aftermath of WWII.
 Not available from ATMs - the one million pound banknote |
His Majesty's Government (The Treasury) had to borrow from the Bank of England on a short term basis and to help with the book keeping, requested the printing of high value bank notes.
The total order sent to The Bank of England printing works was for three hundred million pounds in varying denominations, starting from twenty-five thousand pounds.
It is believed that the entire issue was subsequently destroyed with the exception of numbers seven and eight for one million pounds which were presented to the British and American Treasury Secretaries respectively.
So the banknote at Dix Noonan Webb (number 000007) is one of only two notes bearing the £1,000,000 denomination amount to have survived.
Issued August 30th 1948 and stamped 'CANCELLED' with the date of October 6 of that same year, the note sold for £69,440 ($94,400).
The practice of using large denomination banknotes was mocked in The Simpsons, in which a trillion dollar note was printed by a drunken American president after WWII. It was promptly stolen by Mr Burns, who in turn was eventually conned out of it by Cuba's Fidel Castro, rescuing the country's communist economy.
Collectors interested in items which represented enormous wealth in their time will be fascinated by a Standard Oil share certificate we currently have available. If it were still valid today, it would be worth around $10bn.
