10.000 Pesos

Colombia's in-house printing operation at the Banco de la República has produced the country's notes since the 1960s, making it one of the few central banks in Latin America to maintain full sovereign control over production — no contracting out to De La Rue or American Bank Note Company. By the mid-1990s, the 10.000 Pesos denomination was a workhorse note, its real purchasing power badly eroded by the persistent inflation that dogged the Colombian economy through that decade.

Pick #444 falls within a transitional period before Colombia's significant 2000s security upgrades, when the thread and watermark combination was still considered adequate deterrence against the sophisticated counterfeit operations then active in the region.