10 Pesos

Costa Rica's Ministerio de Hacienda y Guerra — the combined Finance and War ministry — issued this note directly as a government obligation rather than through a chartered bank, a distinction that mattered legally and commercially. At this point Costa Rica had no central bank; fiscal paper circulated alongside private bank notes and foreign coin in a monetary environment that was, at best, improvised.

Bradbury, Wilkinson had already established themselves as the preferred security printer for Latin American governments by the 1860s, handling engraving and printing for several small republics with limited domestic infrastructure. Pick 104 is among the earliest Costa Rican government notes catalogued, and surviving examples are genuinely rare.