2 Reales Tesoro Nacional

The Tesoro Nacional del Paraguay series of 1860 was issued under the government of Carlos Antonio López, who had established the state treasury as the sole note-issuing authority — there was no central bank, and López kept monetary affairs under tight executive control. Printing domestically at Charles Riviere's Asunción lithography shop was a deliberate choice; López was deeply wary of foreign financial entanglement and preferred local production despite the obvious limitations in quality and security that entailed.

The result is a note of notably crude lithographic execution compared to contemporary South American issues printed in London or Paris. Riviere's shop was not equipped for the intaglio work that would have produced finer line detail, and the watermark security was minimal. The entire series was wiped from circulation by the catastrophic destruction of the War of the Triple Alliance, which began in 1864 and eliminated roughly half of Paraguay's population — surviving examples of any denomination are genuinely rare.