100 Quetzales Banco Central de Guatemala

Banco Central de Guatemala was itself brand new in 1926 — it had been established only that year under monetary reforms pushed through by President Lázaro Chacón's predecessor, José María Orellana, who effectively unified Guatemala's fragmented banking system and replaced several private note-issuing banks with a single central authority. This 100 Quetzal note, printed by De La Rue in London, was among the first issues the new institution put into circulation.

The Quetzal itself had only just been introduced as the national currency in 1925, pegged at parity with the US dollar — a rate that held, remarkably, for decades.