Catalog
5 Soles
| Issuer | Banco La Providencia |
|---|---|
| Year | 1877 |
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| Composition | Cotton paper |
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| Obverse description | The obverse bears the bank title EL BANCO LA PROVIDENCIA across the centre, with PERU at the top and CINCO SOLES as the denomination legend. A female allegorical vignette with a seated figure and child appears at the lower left, while a caduceus-flanked numeral 5 vignette occupies the lower right. The note carries a green guilloche underprint with the large numeral 100 visible in the centre field, and borders of repetitive CINCO lettering in the top and bottom margins. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse is printed in brown and carries the bank name BANCO LA PROVIDENCIA in the upper and lower margins, with CINCO repeated along the side borders. The central field is dominated by a large oval handstamp reading EMISION BANCARIA / EMISION - PACHERA / 1877 / POR EL GOBIERNO, applied over an intricate guilloche background. Numeral 5 panels appear at both left and right within the geometric lathe-work border design. |
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| Comments |
Banco La Providencia was a private Peruvian commercial bank operating during the brief window of free banking that preceded the monetary chaos of the War of the Pacific. By the time Chilean forces occupied Lima in 1881, most of the private bank note-issuing institutions had collapsed or suspended payments — La Providencia among them. Notes from this issuer rarely turn up in any condition, a direct consequence of the bank's short operational life and the economic destruction of the war years.
The American Bank Note Company held contracts with numerous South American banks simultaneously in this period, producing plates for competing institutions sometimes within the same year.