5 Pesos

Nicaragua's Tesoro Nacional — the National Treasury, not a central bank — issued directly against state revenues rather than through a banking intermediary, an arrangement that made these notes more vulnerable to political disruption than institutionally backed paper. The 1900 issue came during a period when Nicaraguan public finance was chronically strained by factional conflict between Liberal and Conservative governments, and the currency's credibility tracked those tensions closely.

Waterlow & Sons produced the plates in London to a high technical standard, but the issuing authority's fiscal instability meant redemption was never guaranteed. Notes from this series turn up in genuinely circulated condition far more often than in any approach to original state.