50 Centavos

The Estado Soberano de Bolívar was one of Colombia's nine sovereign states under the federal constitution of 1863 — each empowered to issue its own currency, maintain its own laws, and function with considerable autonomy from Bogotá. That federal arrangement collapsed in 1886 under the Regeneración movement, which abolished the sovereign states entirely and centralized monetary authority. This note, dated 1883, was issued just three years before that abolition rendered the Estado de Bolívar — and its paper money — constitutionally extinct.

Hamilton Bank Note was a respected New York firm, later absorbed into the American Bank Note Company consolidation of 1879, though it continued operating under its own name into the mid-1880s.