NOONANS SELL MAGNIFICENT IRAQ BANKNOTES FOR HAMMER PRICE OF £100,000 AND £50,000

An Iraq specimen note that was printed in India during the Second World War sold for a hammer price of £100,000 at Noonans Mayfair in a sale of World Banknotes on Wednesday & Thursday, November 29 & 30, 2023. It had been expected to fetch £50,000-£70,000 and was purchased by a lifetime collector or Iraqi banknotes [lot 499].

The specimen 100 Fils dated from 1941, had the serial number O/00 000000 and was decorated with a portrait of King Faisal II as a baby. Described by Andrew Pattison, Head of Banknote Department at Noonans: “As most exciting banknote to come to market anywhere in the world this year,” the Iraq 100 Fils specimen was printed by the Nasik Press in India during the Second World War and given to the Director-General of Finance, Abraham Elkabir. It was being sold by one of his descendants, also named Elkabir.

He continued: “It is an almost mythical banknote; it had never been offered at auction before and is unlikely to ever come up again. The note was issued for a matter of weeks and only a single low-grade example is believed to have survived. For dedicated collectors of Iraq, this auction represented the only chance to complete the Iraq series once and for all.”

Also, in the sale and from the same vendor was a specimen 50 Fils from 1944 with the serial number A000000 and a portrait of King Fasial II as a baby which fetched a hammer price of £50,000 against an estimate of £30,000-40,000. It was bought by a serious general collector of world banknotes [lot 500].

The sale also included the first major part of the Peter Holland Collection - a superb group of world notes from China, Hyderabad, Ceylon, and Sweden, as well South Africa. Many of these notes had not appeared in auction anywhere for well over a decade.

Included was the highest denomination and rarest Swedish note ever produced with only a handful surviving.  From the Sveriges Riksbank in Sweden, the 10,000 Kronor note dated from 1939 and sold for a hammer price of £17,000 to a major world banknotes collector from Eastern Europe. It was estimated of £10,000-£14,000 [lot 907].

As Andrew Pattison explains: “When this note was issued, it was worth the equivalent of four kilograms of solid gold and would easily have purchased an average house.”