OLD PAPER MONEY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 105, 6 May 1933, Page 6

OLD PAPER MONEY

BILLIONS OF POUNDS PRICELESS COLLECTION 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 Air. F. Catling, of London. The face value ot the collection represents billions of pounds. 4 ‘lt is impossible to estimate the actual value, ’ Mr. Catling said recently, ‘‘because no similar collection has ever been sold. It is priceless. Ho displayed some specimens from his collection which is contained in 110 volumes and housed in a steel asbes-tos-lined case. “The history of paper money,” Mr. Catling stated, “is linked up with the word ‘blood.’ Look at these Chinese notes—the oldest in the world—issued by Kubla Khan toward the fall of the Ming dynasty. Then I have notes printed during the French and Russian Revolutions, and the American War of Independence; notes issued for the use of prisoners during the great war. Here are forgeries of the early nineteenth century, for which men and wo men were hanged.” A caller fingered notes inscribed “issued by Colonel R. 8. S. Baden Powell” at Mafcking. ami those pieces of yellow paper signed by “Gordon Pasha” in fateful Khartoum. There wer e aiso pages of elaborate German war-time notes, bearing heroic legends, and printed on tin-foil, kidskin, leather, and silk to impress on a sullen public the glory of the tottering Fatherland. “I have scoured the world and spent thousands of pounds in my search for rare specimens,” Mr. Catling confessed. “Aly father began the collection and I have spent my life carrying on the work.”