25 Centavos

The Banco de Londres y Río de la Plata was a British-owned commercial bank that opened in Buenos Aires in 1862, one of the first foreign banks to operate in Argentina. The Rosario branch issued its own notes — a practice that was common before any centralized monetary authority existed in the country — and this 25 centavos piece belongs to the earliest known emissions from that branch.

The 1860s were chaotic years for paper currency in Argentina's interior provinces, with provincial banks, foreign commercial banks, and private houses all issuing competing obligations of questionable backing. British banking concerns generally maintained better redemption records than their local counterparts, which gave notes like this one real transactional credibility on the ground in Rosario.

Small-denomination fractional notes from provincial branches of this bank are considerably rarer than their Buenos Aires equivalents.