100 Pesos Fuertes

Banco Mauá y Ca. was the Argentine arm of the commercial empire built by Irineu Evangelista de Sousa, the Brazilian financier later ennobled as Visconde de Mauá. The Rosario branch operated during a period when provincial and private banks flooded Argentina with their own paper, well before any centralized monetary authority existed to regulate the supply. This note was issued into that competitive, often chaotic, environment.

The American Bank Note Company had established itself as the dominant supplier to South American issuers by the 1860s, and the Mauá commissions were among dozens it held simultaneously across the continent. The PS prefix in the Pick numbering places this firmly in the South American private bank series — a category where surviving examples are genuinely uncommon, particularly at the 100 Pesos Fuertes denomination.