10 000 Pesos

This note belongs to the Serie W series printed in-house at Banco de México's own production facility — a deliberate policy shift away from foreign security printers that the bank had pursued since the early 1970s. By the late 1980s, Mexico was printing its entire note range domestically, a capacity built partly in response to the humiliating peso crises of 1976 and 1982, when reliance on overseas contractors complicated emergency reissues.

The denomination itself reflects the severity of those crises. 10,000 pesos had been an inconceivable face value a generation earlier. By 1991, when this series was withdrawn, inflation had rendered it barely sufficient for a bus fare — the entire peso was redenominated at 1,000-to-1 in 1993, turning this note into a theoretical 10 nuevo pesos piece.