5 Peso Victory Note

It's been a while after my last post and after fixing some few drawbacks last week causing my entire files to be accidentally deleted that is composed mostly of scanned collection pictures. Anyway this feels like starting all over again, especially with the picture editing part. At least now that is everything is back to normal, I can continue sharing some of my collection again.

This one is part of the Victory series during the American period and this particular 5 Peso denomination is the only one that bears two portrait instead of one in the entire series. As you can see at the left side of the note bears the portrait of William McKinley and on the right side shows the portrait of George Dewey.

During the earlier issues of the same denomination and only the picture of McKinley is seen, but in this one, Dewey's portrait was added for a reason. It seems that this a way of paying tribute to Dewey as a hero during the Spanish-American war.

I've got some information from Wikipedia telling about Dewey and his role as part of the Philippine history:

" On April 27, 1898, he sailed out from China with orders to attack the Spanish at Manila Bay. He stopped at the mouth of the bay late the night of April 30, and the following morning he gave the order to attack at first light, by saying the now famous words "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley." Within 6 hours, on May 1, he had sunk or captured the entire Spanish Pacific fleet under Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón and silenced the shore batteries at Manila, with the loss of only one life on the American side. News of the victory in the Battle of Manila Bay made Dewey a great hero in the United States, and Dewey was promoted to Rear Admiral. Dewey's swift easy victory no doubt did much to encourage the William McKinley administration in its decision to place the Philippines under American control."

Another type of this note got the CENTRAL BANK OF THE PHILIPPINES printed in red at back portion of the note and still having the same design as above. These two notes circulated during the time Sergio Osmeña(Philippine President during that time) as can be seen in the signature next to the serial number of the lower portion of the note.

I kind of notice that these notes seems to have slight burn in one side and maybe someone got the chance to saved it in time before getting destroyed somehow. I'm just lucky though that these are still in somewhat good condition as it seems to be scarce nowadays.

As a last part of this post, I would like to thank Mr. Coolpit for the accommodation last Saturday and for the other collectible items that I've got from him that I will share some other time. Also I would like to thank my uncle for having the back-up copies of the scanned pictures I'm showing. Lucky for me that he is collector as well, thus keeping the picture files safe and sound. Well that's all for now and I'll post again during some free time and thanks for having some time reading this one.