Catalog
1 Peso
| Issuer | Banco de Buenos Ayres |
|---|---|
| Year | 1823 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | The obverse bears a circular vignette at the left with a radiant sun face, enclosed within the circular legend of the issuing bank. The denomination "Un Peso" is inscribed at the top centre, with the promise-to-pay text in Spanish stating payment of one ounce of gold for seventeen pesos in these notes, followed by manuscript signatures of the Interventor and the President. A handwritten date appears at the lower left, with the serial number field at the upper right. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse is plain, without printed design elements, consistent with early nineteenth-century Argentine provincial note production. |
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| Comments |
The Banco de Buenos Ayres was established in 1822 as Argentina's first formal banking institution, founded under the direction of Bernardino Rivadavia largely to finance the provincial government of Buenos Aires and stabilize a commodity-starved local economy. This note predates any national Argentine monetary authority by decades — the country had no central bank until 1935.
Printed locally rather than abroad, which was the exception rather than the rule for early Latin American paper issues of this period. The PS prefix in the Pick reference signals provisional or state-chartered status, reflecting that this was a provincial institution, not a sovereign one.
The bank collapsed in 1826 following a currency crisis tied to the Cisplatine War with Brazil.