Australian star replacement banknotes

This is the definitive guide to market activity for Australian star replacement banknotes.

In September 1948, Australian note printing authorities decided to adopt the US system of using star replacement notes as substitutes for spoiled notes. A memo to Commonwealth Bank staff at that time advised them that: “Notes used for replacement purposes will have a five-pointed star in the position normally occupied by the last figure of the serial number.”

The new star replacement system made it much easier for printing staff and tellers to check and count notes and brought about a considerable saving in time and labour costs.

When a particular star replacement note becomes available, a collector can ask themselves one or several of the following questions:

• How has this banknote been graded previously?
• What did it sell for previously?
• Has it previously been included in a “named” or famous collection?
• What have comparable notes sold for lately?
• What were comparable notes selling for 5 years ago?

Until recently, the ability to answer questions such as these required a personal database of auction catalogues painstakingly built up over a period of time. Such a resource will not only take decades to build (and can be impossible to build retrospectively), but it can also be incredibly expensive.

The good news is that Mick Vort-Ronald has kept meticulous records on the auction sales of Australian banknotes for several decades now, leaving us with a perfect resource that can be used to look up pretty much any Australian pre-decimal banknote, as well as many scarcer decimal banknotes.

These books allow the advanced collector of Australian banknotes to quantify the rarity of the notes they have an interest in, and to see what pattern of activity they have been part of over an extended period of time.

If you have an interest in acquiring even just one Australian star replacement banknote, this book is an excellent resource worth its weight in gold, one that will prove its value time and again.