Ozzy Notaphilist

Ozzy Notaphilist Sharing the love of notaphily and numismatics. Buying and selling global and historical currency. Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺
IBNS Member

Passionate Notaphilist & Numismatist
🪙 Exploring the history of empires through currency
🌍 Special focus on 19-20th century Europe.

Issued under King George the Fifth, by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which had taken over note-issuing authority f...
16/05/2026

Issued under King George the Fifth, by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which had taken over note-issuing authority from the Treasury in 1924. The first one pound design under the new arrangement, signed by Sir Ernest Cooper Riddle, the Bank’s first Governor, and James Heathershaw, Secretary to the Treasury. On the reverse, the founding scene at Sydney Cove on the twenty-sixth of January, 1788. The note stayed in circulation for six years, from late 1927 to early 1933, a stretch that took it through the last boom years of the twenties, the Wall Street crash, Australia’s exit from the gold standard, and the worst of the Depression. Why hold a Poor to Fair example? Because a note this worn is a witness. This is the pound that did not get saved for a rainy day because the rainy day arrived. It bought bread, paid rent, and at some point ran out.

Issued under King George the Fifth, by the Commonwealth Treasury, under the authority of the Australian Notes Act 1910 t...
16/05/2026

Issued under King George the Fifth, by the Commonwealth Treasury, under the authority of the Australian Notes Act 1910 that ended the patchwork of private bank issues and gave the young Commonwealth a sovereign currency of its own. Printed in Melbourne by T. S. Harrison, signed by Charles Joseph Cerutty and James Robert Collins, redeemable in gold coin at the Seat of Government. The Cerutty/Collins one pound circulated for five years, from 1918 to mid 1923, a span that took it through the end of the Great War, the Spanish flu, and the postwar slump. Why bother with a Poor to Fair example? Because every note in this grade has been spent. It passed through the hands of soldiers returning from France, of shopkeepers and shearers, of grandmothers paying the milkman. A wreck of a note is a working record of the country it served, and it is, frankly, the only way most collectors will ever own a Treasury series pound at all.

🇺🇦 50 Karbovantsiv, Ukrainian People’s Republic, 1918🔱Three armies printed from these plates. Each one disowned the work...
04/05/2026

🇺🇦 50 Karbovantsiv, Ukrainian People’s Republic, 1918
🔱
Three armies printed from these plates. Each one disowned the work of the last.

50 Karbovantsiv of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, 1918. Numista N #207677. The collector name is the Lebid-Yurchyk, after the printed signature of Khrystofor Lebid-Yurchyk, Director of the State Treasury. Designed by Oleksandr Krasovskyi. Printed in Odessa under Hetman Skoropadskyi.

The series number tells the whole story.

AO 189 to 209. Ukrainian People’s Republic, 1918 to 1919. Legitimate.

AO 210 to 235. White Army of General Denikin, 1919. Declared fake by the Ukrainian government.

AO 236 to 250. Soviet Army, 1920, for the Galician Soviet Socialist Republic.

This one is AO 205. The legitimate UNR range. Same plates, three regimes, each disowning the last.

The obverse carries a Ukrainian peasant leaning on a spade, a woman in folk dress with a sheaf of wheat, and the tryzub centred above. The reverse is one of the most distinctive backs in the entire UNR series. Olive green field, red oval portrait medallion, small red trident. The inscription warns за фальшування караєтьсь тюрмою. Forgery punishable by imprisonment. A warning that proved difficult to enforce. Printed without watermarks on inconsistent paper, the Lebid-Yurchyk became one of the most forged Ukrainian notes of the period.

Three armies. Three regimes. One set of plates.

🇺🇦 100 Hryven, Ukrainian People’s Republic, 1918🔱A state ordered this banknote into existence in March 1918. By the time...
04/05/2026

🇺🇦 100 Hryven, Ukrainian People’s Republic, 1918
🔱
A state ordered this banknote into existence in March 1918. By the time it reached Kyiv it had outlived two governments. By the time the average Ukrainian held one in his hand, the regime that issued it had less than two months to live.

100 hryven of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, 1918. Numista N #226184. Designed by Heorhiy Narbut, the man rightly called the father of Ukrainian money. Printed in Berlin by the Reichsdruckerei. Entered circulation on 17 October 1918 under Hetman Skoropadskyi, 59 days before his government fell.

The obverse is pure Narbut. A peasant woman with sheaf and sickle. A worker with hammer and apron. A wreath of Ukrainian bounty between them. Hammer and sickle on the currency of an explicitly anti-Bolshevik republic, before those symbols hardened into Soviet iconography. The blue and rose palette is not Narbut’s. The Reichsdruckerei altered the colours of every Ukrainian note it printed without permission. The colours you see here are German.

The reverse carries the tryzub within a wreath, flanked by twin Ionic columns. Proclaimed the National Emblem of the UNR on 25 February 1918, months before this note left Berlin.

The line along the bottom is the one that matters. 1 Гривня містить 8,712 долі щирого золота. One hryvnia contains 0.3833 grams of pure gold. 100 hryvnia, 1.23 troy ounces. Gold backed sovereignty for a state born in war and extinguished within years.

In 1996 independent Ukraine resurrected both the name hryvnia and the tryzub. The continuity is deliberate.

The state collapsed. The gold backing did not.

1892 Union Bank of Australia £10 Proof. Picked this up through Spinks UK. My first graded note and my first Australian c...
19/02/2026

1892 Union Bank of Australia £10 Proof.

Picked this up through Spinks UK. My first graded note and my first Australian colonial issue. 1892 Union Bank of Australia £10 Proof, Sydney branch. PMG 62 NET.

My 3rd great grandfather Thomas D***s was transported in 1820 for holding counterfeit banknotes. Fourteen years. While in Van Diemen’s Land he picked up another seven for holding stolen sheep. Twenty one years under sentence in total.

His son Thomas D***s Jr, born 1844, became a shopkeeper in Coopernook on the Manning River. This note was circulating in New South Wales while he was running that shop.

Two years later, in 1894, my great grandfather Stanley Manning D***s was born. He went on to serve at Gallipoli with the 1st AIF.

Convict. Shopkeeper. Gallipoli veteran. That is my line.

With a proud Australian colonial heritage behind it, this note holds pride of place in my collection.

The IBNS “One Note for a World of Knowledge” membership is now live.Join a global community of banknote collectors and e...
01/01/2026

The IBNS “One Note for a World of Knowledge” membership is now live.
Join a global community of banknote collectors and enthusiasts.

Sign up here:
https://www.theibns.org/onenote

Please note: Memberships will not be processed before 07:00 GMT (18:00 AEDT).

Another empire falls neatly into place in the collection.I have finally added the Ottoman Empire 1 Livre (1916 / AH 1332...
30/11/2025

Another empire falls neatly into place in the collection.

I have finally added the Ottoman Empire 1 Livre (1916 / AH 1332), completing my wartime run with the 20 Piastres (1916 / AH 1332), ¼ Livre (1915 / AH 1331), and ½ Livre (1915 / AH 1331). Four denominations issued while the empire was navigating the largest conflict in its history.

This 1 Livre comes from a pivotal moment. It was printed after the Gallipoli landings, in the middle of World War One, when the Ottoman Empire stood with the Central Powers alongside the Austro Hungarian Empire and most of Germany. Within a short period the Ottomans, the Austro Hungarians and Imperial Germany all collapsed, and their currencies disappeared as new nations and systems took shape.

This Ottoman note is crisp and beautiful. Adding it completes this wartime run and strengthens my broader arc of fallen empires, transitions and the paper relics they left behind.

#1915 #1916

Today’s note of the day is a note that sits at a pivotal moment in Southeast Asian and British monetary history. This Ma...
16/11/2025

Today’s note of the day is a note that sits at a pivotal moment in Southeast Asian and British monetary history.

This Malaya and British Borneo One Dollar dated 21 March 1953 carries the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II before her coronation, placing it between two defining issues.

The preceding note featured King George VI, printed during the final years of the British Empire’s firm control over the region. His portrait symbolised the late-imperial order. After his death in 1952, the currency board introduced this transitional Elizabeth II issue, marking the beginning of what would become the longest reign in British history.

The next series moved away from monarchy entirely. The royal portrait was removed, reflecting the rapid political changes across Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo and Sarawak as they moved toward self-government, independence and eventually their own currencies. It signalled the final years of the Currency Board before its dissolution in the mid nineteen sixties.

This 1953 note sits exactly between empire, Commonwealth and emerging nationhood. A brief window in time captured on paper.

Series I Star Replacement Notes from New ZealandI am proud to add these two New Zealand Series I star replacement notes ...
16/11/2025

Series I Star Replacement Notes from New Zealand

I am proud to add these two New Zealand Series I star replacement notes to the collection. Both the $1 and $2 note carry the star suffix on the serial number, the clear indicator that they were printed to replace notes withdrawn during inspection.

Replacement notes were always printed in smaller quantities, so they sit in a more collectable tier than their standard counterparts.

These belong to New Zealand’s first decimal series, introduced in 1967. The engravings are classic Reserve Bank of New Zealand work produced by De La Rue, with Queen Elizabeth II on the obverse rendered in the clean, fine line style typical of the period. The reverses show two unmistakably New Zealand birds. The $1 carries the fantail and kōwhai and the $2 carries the tūī both with native flora. They remain some of the most elegant designs of the early decimal era before the stronger colour palettes arrived in the later series.

Star replacements have always held a certain quiet appeal for collectors. They remind us of the rigorous checking behind every issued note and they give us a small population of notes that stand apart from the larger print run. These two have survived well and now move from one custodian to another which is exactly how notaphily should be.

I am proud to now be the custodian of this remarkable notaphilic treasure, a Portsmouth Naval, Military & Commercial Ban...
05/11/2025

I am proud to now be the custodian of this remarkable notaphilic treasure, a Portsmouth Naval, Military & Commercial Bank One Pound note, hand signed and dated 28 January 1813. It is a fine example of early 19th century naval banking history and the craftsmanship of Britain’s provincial private banks.

Issued during the Napoleonic Wars, it represents a unique link between maritime finance, local commerce, and Britain’s wartime economy, when private banks like this one kept the Royal Navy and dockyards supplied through trust and reputation.

Purchased from a fellow International Bank Note Society member and reputable seller,Narracan, it reflects the trust and integrity that define our community. So thank you for ensuring it arrived safely. Buying within the IBNS family brings real reassurance, knowing each note passes from one careful custodian to another who shares the same passion for authenticity and preservation.

It has now joined my collection, passed from one guardian of history to the next, where it will be studied and appreciated for generations to come.

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