10 Lempiras

The Banco de Honduras — not to be confused with the later Banco Central de Honduras, which absorbed its functions in 1950 — issued this series during a period when the country's currency system was still managed by a private commercial institution rather than a central bank. The American Bank Note Company's involvement was typical for Central American issuers of the period who lacked domestic printing infrastructure and needed notes that would resist counterfeiting in low-volume, agrarian economies.

P#43 is among the scarcer denominations of this issuer's final decade of operation. The 1941 dating places it squarely in wartime, though Honduras's direct economic disruption from the conflict was limited compared to its export dependency on the United Fruit Company's banana trade, which had already been hammered by Panama disease throughout the 1930s.