5 Pesos

Chile's Fisco — the state treasury — rather than a bank issued this note, a distinction that mattered politically. Following the collapse of the Banco de Chile's note-issuing monopoly and a decade of monetary instability rooted in inconvertible paper, the government took direct control of currency emission. These fiscal notes circulated alongside a banking system still struggling to re-establish credibility after the country abandoned the gold standard in 1878 and never cleanly returned to it.

Printed domestically by the Imprenta Fiscal, this is one of the few Chilean issues of the period not contracted to a foreign security printer. Quality control on domestic runs of this era was inconsistent.