Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
4 Pesos Tesoro Nacional
| Issuer | Tesoro Nacional, Paraguay |
|---|---|
| Year | 1862 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Peso (1856-1944) |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | La ley perseguirá álos falsificadores y sus cómplices 4 PESOS. 4 PESOS. El Tesoro Nacional pagará al portador la cantidad de CUATRO PESOS valor recibido. (Translation: The law will prosecute counterfeiters and their accomplices 4 Pesos. 4 Pesos. The National Treasury will pay to the bearer the amount of Four Pesos received value.) |
| Reverse description | The image provided appears to be a show-through impression of the obverse printed on the verso, with the text and design elements visible in mirror image through the thin paper stock. The right margin carries a vertical typeset panel reading "TESORO NACIONAL" rotated 90 degrees. The note is otherwise unprinted on the reverse. |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Paraguay's Tesoro Nacional issues of the early 1860s were produced almost entirely without outside technical assistance — an unusual circumstance for Latin American paper money of the period, when most regional governments were contracting engravers in London, Paris, or New York. This note was printed domestically in Asunción, under the isolationist regime of Carlos Antonio López, whose signature it bears. López had spent decades carefully sealing Paraguay from foreign commercial entanglement, making state-produced currency a point of political principle as much as practical necessity.
The series was short-lived. López died in September 1862, and the transition to his son Francisco Solano López set the country on a course toward the catastrophic War of the Triple Alliance, which began in 1864 and ultimately destroyed much of Paraguay's population and its pre-war paper currency infrastructure entirely.