Catalog
1 Centavo de Boliviano overprinted on P# 169
| Issuer | Banco Central de Bolivia |
|---|---|
| Year | 1987 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Second boliviano (1986-date) |
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| Obverse description | Provisional issue printed in blackish purple and purple with a dark green arms vignette on multicolor underprint. The national coat of arms appears at center, with a portrait of Marshal Andrés de Santa Cruz at right. The face value is expressed in letters along the bottom, in numerals at top and lower left, and at lower right; inscriptions include the issuer name and the authorizing Supreme Decree reference. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Printed in brown, bluish, and purple-green tones, the reverse carries a central vignette of the Legislative Palace in La Paz. The issuer name runs along the top, the face value in numerals appears in all four corners and in letters at the bottom. A provisional overprint reading "UN CENTAVO DE BOLIVIANO c. 1" is applied at the right, rotated 90 degrees, indicating the revalued denomination under the 1987 monetary reform. |
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| Comments |
Bolivia's 1987 centavo notes were born from catastrophe. The country had just lived through one of the worst hyperinflationary episodes in Latin American history — by 1985, annual inflation had exceeded 20,000%. The peso boliviano was abolished and replaced by the new boliviano at a conversion rate of one million to one, which meant that existing peso stock had to be hastily overprinted and redenominated rather than replaced outright. This note is a direct artifact of that fiscal emergency: old Bundesdruckerei-printed peso sheets pressed back into service with a new identity stamped over the old denomination.
The centavo itself was a subdivision almost never seen in daily use — by the time these circulated, even the smallest transactions had moved well past single-centavo values.