The Frank Goon Reference Collection of British Malayan Banknotes - Part One

Foreword

Welcome to the catalogue for Part One of the legendary Frank Goon Reference Collection of British Malayan Banknotes. It is difficult to overstate how important the Frank Goon Collection is, but suffice to say that it is the finest private collection of banknotes from the region ever assembled. It contains around 800 individual pieces, several hundred of which are unique, or so rare that they do not appear on the market for generations at a time. The collection also contains many of the finest known examples of dozens of notes, many of which appear in this first auction. It includes notes from the Straits Settlements, Sarawak, British North Borneo, Malaya and British Borneo, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, with each of the three parts of the collection featuring a selection of notes from the aforementioned countries.

In many ways, the Straits Settlements provides the core of the collection. The early private bank notes are astonishingly rare, with only a handful appearing in auctions in a normal year. Frank has around 20 in this first part alone, including several from incredible issue locations such as Malacca and Thaiping. The issued HSBC $10 and...