10 Centavos

The Banco Nacional de la República Argentina was a state-backed commercial bank established in 1872 — distinct from a true central bank — and its note-issuing authority in the early 1880s existed alongside a chaotic patchwork of provincial banks all printing their own paper. These fractional centavo denominations were a practical response to chronic small-coin shortages that had plagued Argentine commerce for decades.

The bank collapsed in 1891 during the Baring Crisis, one of the worst sovereign debt failures of the nineteenth century. Notes of this series were rendered worthless almost overnight.