5 Colones

The Banco Internacional de Costa Rica was established by government decree in 1914 as a state-controlled institution, effectively absorbing the note-issuing functions that had previously been fragmented across several private banks. This series, printed by the American Bank Note Company in New York, represents the earliest emissions of that new entity — placing these notes at the precise institutional moment when Costa Rica was consolidating its currency under centralized authority rather than competitive private issuance.

ABNC's intaglio work on the 1914 series is characteristically clean, and the plates show no known errors or major varieties documented for this pick number.