1/2 Real Boliviano

The Banco de San Juan operated from the Argentine province of San Juan under the banking legislation of the early 1870s, a period when provincial free banking produced a chaotic proliferation of note-issuing institutions across Argentina — many of which failed within a decade. This branch issue for Catamarca is among the more obscure emissions from that era, and the PS# prefix in the Pick Specialized catalog confirms its provisional or speculative attribution, meaning full documentation of issuance and redemption history has never been firmly established.

The fractional real boliviano denomination itself signals just how early and transitional this note is — Argentina's peso system had not yet fully displaced the old colonial real-based reckoning in provincial commerce.