12½ Centésimos

The Banco Comercial de Corrientes was one of several provincial Argentine banks issuing their own paper during the chaotic monetary period that followed the fall of Rosas, when no unified national currency existed and each province largely fended for itself. Corrientes, a northeastern province that had maintained a degree of political independence throughout the mid-nineteenth century, chartered this bank to facilitate local commerce — the fractional denomination itself signals how scarce small change was.

Lithographed by Alberto Larsch in Paraná, the then-capital of the Confederación Argentina. Larsch was one of the few competent commercial lithographers operating in the interior at the time.