10 Pesos

Waterlow & Sons held the Uruguayan concession for this series across two decades, a period that bracketed both the First World War and the early Depression years — each of which put real pressure on the Río de la Plata monetary system. Uruguay avoided the worst of the postwar inflation that devastated neighboring Argentina, in part because the Banco de la República had been restructured in 1896 as a state institution with tighter issuance controls than most of its regional peers.

The watermark is the sole mechanical security feature — not unusual for Waterlow production of this period, which relied heavily on intaglio print quality as a deterrent.