5 Colones

Waterlow & Sons held the printing contract for Salvadoran notes through a period of considerable political turbulence — the Banco Central de Reserva itself had only been established in 1934, replacing the earlier system of commercial bank note issuance that had collapsed under the pressures of the early Depression years. The 1938 series came just four years after that institutional reset.

The sixteen-year date range on P#82 reflects multiple issue dates within the same basic series, not a continuous uninterrupted print run. Waterlow's contract with El Salvador ran alongside dozens of other Latin American relationships, and the plates were maintained and reused across successive authorized releases.