5 Pesos

The Banco de Cartagena was one of a cluster of Colombian private banks authorized under the 1880s banking reforms, operating out of the Caribbean port city that had served as Spain's principal bullion entrepôt on the South American coast. By 1900 the bank was operating under severe strain — Colombia's Thousand Days War, which erupted in October 1899, was already disrupting trade, supply chains, and public confidence in private paper. Notes of this period were often issued in haste and redeemed, if at all, under chaotic conditions.

Surviving examples from the 1900 dated issues are scarce, almost certainly because wartime hoarding and subsequent bank failures pulled most of them out of circulation permanently rather than back through normal redemption channels.