Catalog
1 Bolívar
| Issuer | Banco Central de Venezuela |
|---|---|
| Year | 1989 |
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| In circulation to | 5 October 1989 |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | BANCO CENTRAL DE VENEZUELA PAGADEROS AL PORTADOR EN LAS OFICINAS DEL BANCO UN BOLIVAR 1 |
| Reverse description | The reverse is dominated by a central inscription of the denomination UN BOLÍVAR in words, flanked on the left by the Venezuelan Coat of Arms and on the right by an elaborate guilloche pattern. The numeral 1 appears in each of the four corners. |
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| Comments |
By 1989, the 1 Bolívar note was an anachronism. Inflation had so thoroughly eroded Venezuela's purchasing power that the denomination was functionally worthless in daily commerce — a coin would have sufficed, and eventually did. The Banco Central kept issuing small-denomination paper well past the point of practical utility, a pattern common to Latin American central banks facing structural inflation rather than acute crisis.
Bundesdruckerei, the German federal printer, held the Venezuela contract through much of this period. Their intaglio work on low-denomination notes of this era is technically consistent, though the 1 Bolívar series attracted little collector attention precisely because it circulated heavily and wore fast.