20 Centavos

Colombia's 1900 was not a stable year for paper currency. The War of a Thousand Days — one of the bloodiest civil wars in Colombian history — began in October of that year, and the Banco Nacional was already under severe strain from years of unbacked note emissions. The government had been printing heavily against inadequate metallic reserves since the 1880s, and by 1900 the bank's notes were widely distrusted and trading at steep discounts to their face value.

Local printing in Bogotá was the only practical option by this point — international printers were inaccessible under wartime conditions. The Banco Nacional itself was formally liquidated in 1904 as part of postwar monetary reform.