20 Bolivianos

Banco Nacional de Bolivia operated as a regional issuer, and its Cobija branch — serving the then-Bolivian coastal province of Atacama — occupied an economically strategic position tied to nitrate and guano extraction. That territory was lost to Chile in the War of the Pacific, which began in 1879, making notes issued from Cobija before that date relics of a jurisdiction that effectively ceased to exist.

The American Bank Note Company printed the S187 series, as it did for much of South America during this period. Surviving examples from the Cobija branch are genuinely uncommon — the branch had a short operational window, and the political rupture of 1879 would have disrupted any orderly note retirement.