Catalog
25 Pesos
| Issuer | El Banco Español Filipino |
|---|---|
| Year | 1883 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Uniface note printed on blue paper. The bank's crowned coat of arms vignette is centered at the top, flanked by oval denomination cartouches reading 'Pfs 25' at upper left and upper right. An ornate rectangular border of guilloche and foliate scrollwork frames the entire face, with decorative rosettes at the corners. Serial number fields appear beneath the denomination cartouches, with the date '1° Enero 1883' and place name 'Manila' centered below the main inscription, above three signature lines for El Director, El Tenedor de libros, and El Cajero. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | EL BANCO ESPAÑOL FILIPINO à la presentacion de este billete pagará al portador VEINTE Y CINCO pesos fuertes. 1° Enero 1883. Manila 1° Enero 1883. El Director El Tenedor de libros El Cajero SPECIMEN |
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El Banco Español Filipino was the Philippines' first chartered bank, established in 1851 under royal decree and granted the exclusive right to issue banknotes in the archipelago. By the 1880s the bank had already survived several cycles of agricultural credit crisis tied to the sugar and tobacco trades, and its notes circulated alongside a population far more comfortable with coin.
Paper money faced persistent skepticism in the provinces, and high-denomination notes like this 25 Peso piece saw most of their life in Manila commercial transactions rather than retail circulation. The early 1880s series is notably scarce — few examples reached the 20th century intact, partly due to the bank's own redemption practices and partly due to the destruction wrought during the Philippine Revolution of the late 1890s.
The bank was reorganized as Banco de las Islas Filipinas in 1908.