5 Pesos Oro Legal

Banco del Ruiz was one of several regional Colombian private banks chartered in the late nineteenth century, operating out of Manizales in the coffee-growing Caldas department. The bank issued notes under the system of free banking that Colombia maintained until the 1923 Kemmerer Mission recommended — and the government enacted — a centralized national bank. After Banco de la República was established that year, surviving private bank notes were progressively withdrawn and demonetized.

ABNC handled engraving and printing for a large portion of Colombia's private banking sector during this period, producing notes to a consistent technical standard that the domestic market could not match. The S823 designation places this within the Banco del Ruiz series documented by Pick — a bank whose surviving paper is genuinely scarce given both low original issuance volumes and the systematic destruction that followed centralization.