1/2 Real Plata Boliviana

The Banco Argentino operated out of Rosario during Argentina's brief provincial free-banking period, when individual banks were permitted to issue their own currency before federal consolidation swept most of them out by the late 1870s. This fractional denomination — half a real in Bolivian silver — reflects how thoroughly the older Spanish colonial monetary system still shaped commercial life in the interior provinces well into the republican period. Bolivian silver coinage remained the practical medium of exchange across much of the Argentine northwest and littoral, and bank notes denominated in it were simply more useful to merchants than notes tied to the peso.

ABNC printed the series in New York from engraved plates, as was standard for Argentine provincial issues of the period seeking to project institutional credibility.