10 000 Sucres

Ecuador's 10,000 Sucre note arrived as the currency was already losing ground to inflation at a rate that would ultimately make the denomination obsolete within a decade. The Sucre, named after independence hero Antonio José de Sucre, had been Ecuador's monetary unit since 1884 — by the late 1990s, hyperinflationary pressure had so eroded its value that 10,000 units bought almost nothing. The government's eventual response was drastic: in 2000, Ecuador abandoned the Sucre entirely and officially dollarized, fixing the exchange rate at 25,000 Sucres to one US dollar.

The print run of just over 12 million is modest given the eleven-year issue span, suggesting periodic rather than continuous printing. Security on this series is minimal — watermark only, with no security thread — which reflects both the production costs acceptable at the time and the diminishing incentive to invest in anti-counterfeiting measures for a denomination with a shrinking real-world value.