20 Pesos

The Banco de la Província de Buenos Aires was the oldest and most powerful provincial bank in Argentina, operating as a quasi-central institution throughout much of the nineteenth century. By 1888 it was printing aggressively to fund provincial debt and infrastructure — a policy that contributed directly to the liquidity crisis that fed into the catastrophic Baring Brothers collapse of 1890, when Buenos Aires province effectively defaulted on its foreign obligations and nearly brought down the London financial system with it.

The American Bank Note Company printed the series in New York, as it did the bulk of Argentine provincial paper from this period. Notes issued in the two years before the Baring Crisis tend to show heavier circulation wear when found — they were actively spent into a boom economy before the crash wiped out confidence in provincial paper entirely.