OLD PAPER MONEY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 81, 17 March 1933, Page 13

OLD PAPER MONEY

BILLIONS OF POUNDS. A complete set of banknotes issued and signed by General Gordon during the siege of Khartoum is the latest addition to an amazing collection of more than 40,000 pieces of paper money owned by Mr F. Catling, of London. The face value of the collection represent* billions of pounds. “It is impossible to estimate the actual value,’’ Mr Catling said recently, “because no similar collection has ever been sold. It is priceless.” He displayed some specimens from his colleetiou which is contained in 110 volume* I and housed in a steel asbestos-lined case. “The history of paper money,” Mr Catling stated, “is linked up with the . word ‘ blood. ’ Look at these Chines* notes—the oldest in the world—issued by Kubla Khan toward the fall of th* Ming dynasty. Then 1 have not** printed during the French and Russian Revolutions, aud the American War of , Independence; notes issued for the use of prisoners during the Great War. Here I are forgeries of the early nineteenth , century, for which men and women were hanged.” A caller lingered notes inscribed “issued by Colonel R. S. 8. Baden-Powell” I at Mafeking, and those pieces of yellow paper signed by “Gordon Pasha” in . luteful Khartoum. There were also , pages ot elaborate German war-tiru* note-, bearing heroic legends, ami printed ou tin-foil, kid-skin, leather, and silk to impress on a sullen public the glory of the tottering Fatherland. “I have scoured the world aud spent f thosands of pounds in my search for . rare specimens,” Mr Catling confessed. > “My father began the collection and ; I have spent my, life carrying on th* ' l pvorldJ*