2017-09-23 Sat

“Lady Lavery” banknotes from Ireland are very popular among collectors and were used between 1928 and 1977. 10 shillings, £1, £5, £10, £20, £50, and £100 notes are found in colours orange, green, brown, blue, red, mauve and olive respectively. The obverse features a portrait of Lady Lavery made by her husband Sir John Lavery. The reverse features Irish river gods inspired from sculptures featured at Custom House in Dublin.

Whyte’s is a major auction house which sells interesting Irish notes every year. Dix Noonan Webb auctioneers would be offering the most comprehensive private collection of Irish 10-shilling notes ever assembled.

The notes will be auctioned at Bolton Street in Mayfair on 25th September. The collection is put together by Tony Lenny who lived in Cookstown, Co Tyrone. He worked for the Irish Grain Board and R&H Hall and then shifted to Bray to run a wool shop and bookmakers. Finally, he settled in Wicklow and died when he was 88-years old in 2013.

Lenny was one of Ireland’s finest collectors known for collecting Irish and African banknotes. He acquired several examples of Irish 10-shilling notes and has 230 out of the 231 dates issued. He missed collecting one of the notes that was issued on 15th May 1945. There are no surviving examples of this particular note. Some are the only known examples of a particular date or prefix. Some are rare notes from the 1920s and 1930s and some from the early 1940s. All are stamped with single code letters as a wartime security measure. Each note has an estimated value of £100-£150 up to £800-£1,000.