10 Pesos

One of the earliest documented paper issues from the Río de la Plata region, this customs draft predates the Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires by several years. The Ministerio de Hacienda was effectively improvising a circulating instrument out of administrative necessity — the province had no chartered bank and chronic specie shortages made trade settlement in hard coin nearly impossible.

The embossed seal was the only anti-counterfeiting measure available to the issuer. Crude by any standard, but functional enough for a port economy where officials knew what a legitimate customs document looked like.