1 Peso overprint on P#S283 - Banco de D.Matte, Mac Clure y Cia

Chile's Emisión Fiscal series emerged from the 1878 forced inconvertibility law, which suspended the gold standard and authorized the state to guarantee private banknote issues — a stopgap that dragged on for two decades. By the late 1890s, the government was overprinting surviving stocks of private bank paper rather than commissioning new printings, which is precisely what produced this note: a fiscal overprint applied to existing Banco de D. Matte, Mac Clure y Cia stock, converting a private obligation into a government-guaranteed instrument.

The underlying bank had already ceased independent operation before the overprint was applied. Surviving examples often show the tension between the original engraving quality and the cruder overprint registration.