The Banco Centro-Americano was a short-lived private institution operating out of Guatemala during the late nineteenth century, when competing regional banks each issued their own paper under Guatemala's relatively permissive banking laws of the period. The American Bank Note Company held contracts with dozens of Latin American issuers simultaneously, and the engraved plates produced for these smaller regional banks were often assembled from stock vignette components held in the ABNC's New York archive rather than commissioned from scratch.
S-prefix Pick numbers signal chartered private bank issues, and Guatemalan notes of this type survive in very small numbers — most were redeemed or destroyed following the banking consolidation of the 1890s, when the Guatemalan government moved to restrict private note issuance.
The Banco Centro-Americano was a short-lived private institution operating out of Guatemala during the late nineteenth century, when competing regional banks each issued their own paper under Guatemala's relatively permissive banking laws of the period. The American Bank Note Company held contracts with dozens of Latin American issuers simultaneously, and the engraved plates produced for these smaller regional banks were often assembled from stock vignette components held in the ABNC's New York archive rather than commissioned from scratch.
S-prefix Pick numbers signal chartered private bank issues, and Guatemalan notes of this type survive in very small numbers — most were redeemed or destroyed following the banking consolidation of the 1890s, when the Guatemalan government moved to restrict private note issuance.