ONE of the rarest and most valuable Guernsey banknotes in existence is expected to fetch up to £5,500 at auction next month.
The States of Guernsey £1 note, printed in black on pink paper, was issued on 1 February 1916 and was the highest denomination Guernsey note available at that time.
Auctioneer Spink has described the note as extremely rare and said that despite its age, it was in fine condition.
‘It is certainly one of the nicest Guernsey notes you can get and is also in a very collectable condition,’ said Barnaby Faull, the head of the company’s banknote department.
The note is hand-signed by two prominent Guernsey figures – John Quertier Le Pelley, assistant supervisor at States Administration, and Jurat John Bonamy Collings.
Mr Collings lived in Bonamy House in St James Street, St Peter Port.
He was born in July 1851 and after leaving Elizabeth College became a lieutenant in the 2nd Regiment of the Royal Guernsey Militia and was later promoted to captain.
In the 1870s, he joined the Guernsey Banking Company and eventually became a director. He also became chairman of the Old Bank and chairman of the Guernsey Savings Bank.
He was also constable of St Peter Port.
During the First World War, when the banknote was issued, he was chief of the island’s special constabulary. He was also involved with the Guernsey Railway and Guernsey Gaslight companies.
When he died on 26 March 1932, an obituary stated: ‘In the island’s business life, his mature judgement made him sought after on the directorate of public companies.’
He was also treasurer of the St Peter Port soup kitchen, so how he found time to sign thousands of banknotes is a mystery. But he gradually retreated from public life when his hearing deteriorated, which ‘made it difficult for him to follow the pleadings in the Royal Court’.
Mr Le Pelley was assistant supervisor to the States of Guernsey from 1910 to 1917, when he left Guernsey to start a new life in Italy as a partner in his brother-in-law’s shipping agency in Genoa.
He was born at Le Ponchez, Castel, in November 1868 and died in 1948.
He had returned to Guernsey in 1940, having left Italy to escape the Germans, but was forced to stay in the island during the Occupation. But he was luckier than his daughter, Emmoline, who had to spend the Second World War in Japanese camps.
The 1916 note will be auctioned by Spink at its headquarters in Bloomsbury, London, on 1 October.
At the same sale, a similarly rare 1924 Guernsey £1 note is expected to fetch between £2,200 and £2,600.
But these are not the first valuable Guernsey banknotes to turn up at a Spink sale – an 1809 black-and-white Guernsey Bank £1 note has previously been sold for £1,035.
* Spink is offering a free banknote valuation service to Guernsey Press readers.
‘Sometimes these notes are found in unusual places. Some have even been found in old family Bibles, put there perhaps for safekeeping and then forgotten. So that is always a good place to start the search,’ said Mr Faull.
Article posted on 22nd September, 2008 - 11.30am
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