10 Pesos 1st. issue

The Banco Nacional de la República de Colombia had a troubled final chapter. Established in 1881, the bank became the exclusive issuer of paper currency in Colombia, but by the late 1890s its notes were circulating at steep discounts against specie — the result of chronic over-emission to finance government deficits. The 1900 date places this note squarely within the Thousand Days War, the ruinous civil conflict that ran from 1899 to 1902 and drove Colombia's paper money into near-total collapse.

Printed domestically by Litografía Nacional rather than sent abroad to a European security printer, the note reflects wartime economic isolation as much as anything else. The Banco Nacional was formally liquidated in 1904.