100 Pesos de Oro

The Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires was one of the few provincial banks to survive Argentina's chronic banking instability of the 1870s — partly because the province itself remained financially semi-autonomous from the national government in Buenos Aires city. This note predates the catastrophic Baring Crisis of 1890 by nearly a decade, but the monetary conditions that would produce that collapse were already building: provincial banks were issuing aggressively, and convertibility was increasingly nominal in practice rather than guaranteed.

American Bank Note Company's Buenos Aires commissions from this period are among their more elaborate South American work. The PS#542 is a high-denomination issue from a series that saw genuine commercial circulation, unlike many contemporary provincial notes that were absorbed into interbank clearing before reaching the public.