5 Bolivianos

Banco Francisco Argandoña was one of Bolivia's private provincial banks operating under the 1890 banking law, which permitted regional institutions to issue their own notes — an arrangement that produced a chaotic plurality of competing currencies before the Bolivian government moved to consolidate note issue in the early twentieth century. This note dates from almost exactly that transition point, just ahead of the 1911 reforms that progressively stripped private banks of their issuing privileges.

Bradbury Wilkinson's involvement is characteristic of the period: Bolivian banks, lacking domestic intaglio capacity, routinely commissioned London security printers for prestige and forgery resistance. The S-prefix Pick designation confirms this is a private bank issue, now considerably scarcer than contemporaneous state paper from the Banco de la Nación Boliviana.