Catalog
1 Quetzal
| Issuer | Banco de Guatemala |
|---|---|
| Year | 1955-1957 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Green intaglio print on white paper. A central vignette presents the Palace of the Captains-General in Guatemala City, rendered in fine architectural detail, with a quetzal bird in flight to the upper right. Guilloche rosettes flank the central denomination numeral on either side, and the authorization date appears vertically along the right margin; a six-digit serial number is printed in the lower right corner. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Green print on white paper. A central vignette presents a panoramic view of Lake Atitlán with its surrounding volcanic landscape, framed by fine guilloche borders. The denomination appears in both numeral and text form within the central panel. |
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| Comments |
Waterlow & Sons printed Guatemalan currency through much of the mid-twentieth century, and this issue sits in the middle of a stable, uninterrupted relationship — no monetary crisis precipitated it, no war redenominated it. The Quetzal had been pegged one-to-one with the US dollar since 1925, a parity that held with unusual discipline through the 1950s, which is partly why these notes look unhurried. No emergency overprinting, no rushed design changes.
Waterlow & Sons went into receivership in 1961, partly due to the fallout from the famous 1925 Portuguese banknote fraud — though that scandal predates this issue by three decades, it shadowed the firm's reputation long after. Guatemala shifted printers shortly after the firm's collapse.