Catalog
100 Pesos
| Issuer | Banco Hipotecario |
|---|---|
| Year | 1881 |
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| Reference(s) | P#S515 |
| Obverse description | Black intaglio print on white paper. Central oval vignette of a shepherdess with sheep amid a pastoral landscape, flanked by winged griffin vignettes at left and right. Denomination 100 appears in upper corners; ornate guilloche borders frame the design throughout. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | EL BANCO HIPOTECARIO 100 EL CAJERO |
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| Comments |
The Banco Hipotecario was a mortgage bank, not a central or commercial bank, and its circulating notes were backed by real estate liens rather than specie reserves — an arrangement that made them structurally different from most Latin American paper currency of the period and considerably more vulnerable during property market contractions. Argentina's 1880s saw a wave of such institution-backed emissions, many of which ended badly when the Baring Crisis of 1890 collapsed the property and credit markets simultaneously.
The American Bank Note Company held a near-monopoly on high-quality security printing for South American issuers at this date. Whether this particular emission ever circulated widely is unclear; Banco Hipotecario notes from this series are genuinely scarce in any condition.