Te Velde  (Pilgrim's Rest)
(The Treasury on wheels: notes in the field - 1902.)

It was a heavy blow for the Boers when the British forces under Brigadier-General H.C.O. Plummer took Pietersburg on 8 April 1901. Vorster’s press was destroyed, and they lost their entire supply of bank notes to the British at Lydenburg. For a state requiring money to conduct a war, some of the 986 gold veld ponde (field pounds) of P.J. Kloppers were meagre indeed and the Boer forces were heading for a financial crisis. Money had to be found somewhere. A printing press was urgently needed. Again Kloppers’ ingenuity came to the rescue. A small hand press was discovered in Pilgrim’s Rest. It was broken and incomplete, but after being repaired by Gyzelman, formerly of the Government Printing Works in Pretoria, and one Hendricks, it was used to print some paper money. Some of the letters, as well as the ink, had to be made by the printers themselves. Kloppers etched the Republican Coat of Arms in copper and pressed it into lead to make a printing block. And so the last of the “blue backs” (this time in the field) were issued. The notes were dated 1 March, 1 April and 1 May 1902, and were in £1, £5 and £10 values. In circumstances such as these, some printer’s errors crept in. The printing of the Te Velde notes is similar to the 1917 Interim Bank Notes issued under German East African General von Lettow-Vorbeck.

The estimated original printing of Te Velde notes is about 3000 with only about 500 remaining today.

The Balson Holdings Family Trust holds the "Te Velde" note seen above.

Further reading:

Value in 2005: The 1902 ZAR £1 Te Velde bank notes are highly sought after - valued at over US$1,500 in Unc. Rarely seen on auction.

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