Catalog
100 Pesos
| Issuer | Banco Agrícola Mercantil |
|---|---|
| Year | 1888 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Black on yellow and tan underprint, with a cow's head vignette at left center and a seated Mercury figure at right, a sailing ship visible in the background behind her. Red order numbers are printed over the face. The overall layout follows the classic American Bank Note Company style of the period, with intricate guilloche patterns framing the central design elements. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | Banco Agrícola-Mercantil 100 American Bank Note Company, New York (Translation: Mercantile Agricultural Bank 100 American Bank Note Company, New York) |
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| Comments |
Banco Agrícola Mercantil was a Guatemalan private bank operating under the liberal banking legislation of the 1870s and 1880s, which allowed multiple commercial institutions to issue their own currency — a period of plural note issue that ended definitively with the nationalization reforms of the early twentieth century. The American Bank Note Company was the prestige choice for Central American issuers of this period, and Guatemalan private banks leaned on ABNC heavily to project financial credibility to a skeptical public.
The S-prefix designation in the Pick catalog flags this as a privately issued commercial note rather than a government obligation — technically scrip, though it circulated as currency in practice.