2 Pesos El Imperio Mexicano

This note belongs to the brief and chaotic first Mexican Empire under Agustín de Iturbide, who declared himself emperor in 1822 and was forced to abdicate in March 1823 — meaning this issue was being circulated, or at least prepared, during the final weeks of a collapsing regime. The empire lasted less than two years, and fiscal disarray plagued it throughout; paper money was deeply unpopular with a population that had just spent a decade in independence warfare.

Survivors are rare precisely because the empire's end was so abrupt. Notes were neither systematically redeemed nor officially demonetized in any organized way.