1000 Colones 50 Aniversario BCCR

Issued to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Banco Central de Costa Rica, founded in 1950 — which means the 1998 commemorative date sits two years ahead of the actual half-century. The BCCR was established by Law No. 1130, replacing the earlier system under which the Banco Nacional held central banking functions, and the anniversary was apparently calculated from an earlier organizational predecessor rather than the formal 1950 founding statute.

Oberthur Fiduciaire had a long working relationship with Costa Rica by this period. The watermark remains the sole listed security feature, modest even by late-1990s standards for a commemorative of this denomination.