Catalog
5 Pesos Plata Boliviana
| Issuer | Otero y Cía., Córdoba |
|---|---|
| Year | 1868 |
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| Currency | Peso (1826-1985) |
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| Obverse description | The obverse is printed in black with a pink-red underprint. A portrait vignette of a young woman appears at the upper left, while the central vignette presents an allegorical group of cherubs or putti surrounding a large numeral '5'. A column or architectural vignette occupies the lower right corner, with guilloche rosettes bearing the numeral '5' in each lower corner. The denomination 'CINCO PESOS' is set in bold letterpress across the centre, and the date 'Córdoba, Enero 1º de 1868' appears along the lower portion of the note. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | OTERO Y Cía. A LA PRESENTACION DE ESTE BILLETE pagamos al portador CINCO PESOS 5 Plata Boliviana o su equivalente Córdoba, Enero 1º de 1868 |
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| Comments |
Otero y Cía. was a private commercial house operating out of Córdoba, Argentina — not a bank in any chartered sense. Their issuing of denominated paper in 1868 placed them among dozens of provincial Argentine merchant firms that filled the vacuum left by the near-total absence of formal banking infrastructure in the interior. The Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires had no meaningful reach this far inland, and specie was chronically short.
The "Plata Boliviana" denomination is the telling detail: Bolivian silver reales and their derivatives remained the dominant transactional currency across the Argentine northwest well into the 1870s, and pegging the face value to that standard was a practical acknowledgment of what people actually counted with.