Catalog
10 Pesos
| Issuer | Banco Hipotecario |
|---|---|
| Year | 1881 |
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| Currency | Peso (1826-1985) |
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| Obverse description | The obverse is printed in green and black intaglio. At center-left, a pastoral vignette portrays a seated shepherd with livestock including cattle and sheep in a rural landscape. To the upper right, a circular vignette contains a horse's head in fine engraved detail. The issuer's name "BANCO HIPOTECARIO" appears in bold lettering across the top, with the denomination "DIEZ PESOS" and date "Bogotá 1º de Octubre de 1881" inscribed in ornate script within the central field, flanked by guilloche borderwork and denomination numerals "10" at each corner. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse is printed as a typographic back-print in pale green, largely unadorned and serving as a ghost impression of the obverse design visible in mirror image through the paper. The Banco Hipotecario guilloche patterns and corner numerals "10" are faintly discernible, consistent with the single-sided printing practice common to American Bank Note Company issues of this period. |
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| Comments |
The Banco Hipotecario was a mortgage bank, not a central or commercial institution — its notes were backed by real estate assets rather than specie reserves, an arrangement that attracted periodic scrutiny from investors and government regulators alike. By 1881, several Latin American countries had experimented with mortgage-backed paper, with mixed results, and Argentina's hypotecario system was no exception.
The American Bank Note Company imprint places production firmly in New York, where ABNC held long-standing contracts with numerous South American issuers throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. Whether this series saw meaningful retail circulation or functioned primarily in property and credit transactions is not well documented.