100 Sucres

Ecuador's central bank relied heavily on Thomas De La Rue throughout the 1970s, and this 100 Sucres note was part of a long-running series that bridged two distinct political periods — the civilian government of Velasco Ibarra's final term and the military junta that deposed him in 1972. The sucre itself had been broadly stable through the early 1970s, but the oil boom following the start of Amazonian petroleum exports in 1972 fundamentally changed Ecuador's monetary dynamics, increasing note circulation volumes considerably.

The watermark is the sole security feature on this issue — modest by contemporary standards, though De La Rue's intaglio printing provided an additional tactile deterrent against counterfeiting that the catalog specification doesn't capture.