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4 Pesos Tesoro Nacional
| Issuer | Tesoro Nacional, Paraguay |
|---|---|
| Year | 1862 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 190 × 125 mm |
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| Obverse description | Central oval medallion bearing the Coat of Arms of Paraguay, flanked to the right by a vignette of an ox and plow. The issuer title runs vertically along the left margin, rotated 90 degrees. A manuscript signature of Carlos A. López appears at the centre right, with denomination numerals and ornamental guilloche scrollwork framing the note on all sides. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| 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. |
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| 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.