5 Pesos

Banco de la Unión was one of several Colombian private banks chartered in the late 1870s under the liberal banking legislation that briefly allowed free banking across the country. The arrangement lasted barely a decade — the state monopolized note issue in 1886 under Rafael Núñez's centralization reforms, and most private bank paper became worthless almost immediately. Notes from this issuer that predate that collapse are genuinely uncommon in any condition.

ABNC produced the plates in New York. Colombian private bank commissions of this period were often shared or reused across issuers, so plate provenance is worth examining carefully when attributing variants.