Catalog
10 Quetzales
| Issuer | Banco de Guatemala |
|---|---|
| Year | 1983-1988 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 10 Quetzales (10 GTQ) |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Intaglio portrait of General Miguel García Granados at right, rendered in red-brown tones against a stepped pyramid vignette; a resplendent quetzal bird appears in green at upper left alongside a Mayan glyph panel in the centre. The denomination numeral '10' and text 'DIEZ QUETZALES' are printed in the central guilloche medallion, with three facsimile signature lines below and the authorization date along the right margin. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Central intaglio vignette illustrates the session of the National Legislative Assembly of 1872, rendered in fine line engraving with assembled delegates in a colonnaded chamber; a Mayan deity glyph panel in polychrome occupies the right portion of the design. The issuer name appears in the upper border and the denomination legend runs along the lower margin, with the printer's imprint at the bottom left. |
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| Comments |
Banco de Guatemala had relied on Giesecke & Devrient for successive generations of its quetzal series, and this 10 Quetzales issue spans a turbulent stretch of Guatemalan history — the 1983–1988 window covers the tail end of Ríos Montt's military regime, the subsequent Mejía Víctores administration, and the country's fragile return to civilian rule under Vinicio Cerezo in 1986. Notes from this series therefore passed through radically different political orders without any change to their face.
The security thread on this issue is an early embedded type, relatively unsophisticated by later G&D standards, and counterfeiting of quetzal denominations was a documented problem during the mid-1980s economic stress period.