2 Reales Bolivianos

Banco Domingo Garbino was a private commercial bank operating in Bolivia's early experiment with free banking — a period in which the Bolivian government, lacking the infrastructure for a state-issued currency, granted concessions to private institutions to issue their own notes. The 2 Reales Bolivianos denomination places this firmly in the transitional monetary period before Bolivia decimalized more thoroughly, when reales and pesos still coexisted in everyday commerce alongside Chilean and Peruvian specie.

Private bank issues from Bolivia in this decade are exceptionally rare survivors. Most circulated hard in the mining regions and were redeemed or simply destroyed when the issuing institutions failed or were absorbed. PS#1800 in the Specialized Pick catalog reflects just how peripheral this issue is to mainstream collecting — few examples have been publicly documented.