5 Pesos Provisional Issue

Nicaragua's Tesoro Nacional issued this provisional series in 1910 during a period of acute fiscal instability, when the government lacked both the hard currency and the time to commission notes abroad. Printing locally at the Tipografía Gutenberg in Managua was an expedient choice — the press was primarily a commercial job printer, not a security printing house, and the notes reflect that plainly in their production quality.

The "provisional" designation was not decorative. These circulated under genuine emergency conditions, and the Zelaya government had already fallen by late 1909, leaving the incoming administration to manage a currency in no better shape than the treasury itself.