New bank notes for the new year?

Bank Negara Malaysia recently released a new series of bank notes for the Malaysian Ringgit which brings back into common circulation the RM20 bill. Accordingly, the old RM20 bill was never put out of circulation and is still legal tender as opposed to the RM500 note and RM1 coin. The old RM20 note had a brown theme and is especially hard to find nowadays which actually reminded me about the rare notes I used to/still collect. So here is a short list of what I currently have.

Pre-RM ringgit notes
There were notes used the dollar sign eventhough the wordings used the ringgit representation such as this $50 ringgit bill. This bill was printed in Surrey, England (the company is listed on the note on the back in small print) and uses the old spelling for Gabenor as Gabenur (i.e. Governor in English). It is the largest bill I have for the Malaysian currency sizing up at 14.7cm×8.8cm or 5.75"×3.5".

The one ringgit bill on the other hand was far smaller measuring 12cm×6.4cm or 4.7"×2.5".

Pre-'Merdeka' dollar notes
These are even older and was used during the British colonization of Malaya hence the use of the word dollar instead of ringgit. As far as I know, the British pound (£) was not replicated and used for local trading but accepted as tender (I'm not a historian so I could/most probably am wrong). These dollar notes were also printed in England and carried multiple denominations - and some featured the Queen of England although the $10 note did feature a water buffalo plowing a paddy field. These notes were accepted for legal tender in the countries of Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, Brunei and Singapore ... when/why was the North Borneo name changed to Sabah? I have no idea.

Interesting fact - you may notice a trend in the notes above that the current denominations for the ringgit (all the new and old series releases) STILL use the same colour scheme for the values they represent!

Another thing is that smaller denominations were also paper!!

Commemerative CG98 RM50 ringgit note
The first ever polymer banknote for the Malaysian ringgit was not the RM5 or the current RM50 but actually a limited run RM50 bank note released for the 1998 Commonwealth Games held in Kuala Lumpur. I got this for a steal at only RM50 (at the time it was retailing for RM120 I think) because I knew someone working in BNM. It comes sealed in a folder describing the note which can be viewed both sides through a clear window.

50th Merdeka RM50 notes
Although not really rare (except for a limited number with specific serial numbers/sets/folders), the current RM50 bill had a special release to mark the 50th Independence Day for Malaysia. The notes look exactly the same except for the top right corner at the back which has an additional '50' logo. I stumbled upon these 5 at an ATM machine where I work ... was withdrawing RM500, saw these 5 bills and thus had to withdraw another 5 bills because of that.

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