20 Quetzales Banco Central de Guatemala, 1st. print

The Banco Central de Guatemala was established by law in 1926 as part of a sweeping monetary reform pushed through with the direct involvement of Edwin Kemmerer, the Princeton economist whose stabilization missions reshaped central banking across Latin America in the 1920s. This note belongs to the inaugural series that followed, with De La Rue in London producing the plates — a relationship Guatemala would maintain for decades.

The Q20 was a high-denomination instrument in a country where most daily commerce moved in fractions of a quetzal. Notes at this level circulated primarily through commercial banks and government accounts rather than retail trade, which accounts for the relatively low survival rate of genuinely circulated examples versus those held in institutional reserves.