50 Australes

Argentina's chronic inflation of the late 1980s forced several provinces to issue their own emergency currency — quasi-money that could circulate locally when federal notes were either unavailable in sufficient quantity or losing value faster than they could be distributed. Salta's australes notes, of which this is one denomination, were issued under provincial authority as a stop-gap during the hyperinflationary spiral that would eventually push annual inflation past 3,000 percent in 1989.

Casa de Moneda's involvement lent the issue a degree of official credibility that purely private provincial scrip lacked. The watermark security feature is modest but meaningful — an acknowledgment that even emergency paper needed protection against local counterfeiting.