10 Pesos Plata Boliviana

The Banco Provincial de Santa Fé was a provincial institution operating under Argentina's decentralized banking regime of the 1870s, when each province retained authority to charter its own note-issuing bank. That arrangement collapsed after the 1890 Baring Crisis prompted the national government to consolidate currency control, making all such provincial issues obsolete — and most were redeemed and destroyed in bulk.

The American Bank Note Company contract for this series was typical of how Argentine provincial banks sourced their security printing at the time, New York being the dominant supplier for South American issuers throughout the 1870s. The denomination in plata boliviana rather than pesos fuertes reflects the fractured currency conventions of the Río de la Plata region, where Bolivian silver coinage still served as a reference standard in interior provinces far from Buenos Aires.