1 Peso/10 Reales Sociedad del Zancudo

The Sociedad del Zancudo was a mining company operating in the Andes near Titiribí, Antioquia — one of the most productive gold and silver mining concerns in nineteenth-century Colombia. Private banknotes issued by mining and commercial firms were common in Colombia during this period, filling the gap left by an underdeveloped national banking system. This note denominates simultaneously in pesos and reales, reflecting the transitional monetary arithmetic of the early 1880s before decimal standardization fully took hold.

The American Bank Note Company contract is worth noting: Colombian private issuers of this period routinely commissioned New York-printed security paper precisely because local printing could not match the intaglio quality needed to deter counterfeiting in remote mining regions.