50 Colones

The Banco Central de Costa Rica was itself brand new when this note was issued — the institution was created by law in January 1950, replacing the older Banco Nacional system as the country's sole currency authority. These early Banco Central emissions were effectively the first notes to carry the new institution's name, and the 50 Colones denomination sat at the high end of everyday transactional use in a small economy still heavily reliant on coffee export revenues.

ABNC's engraved intaglio work on this series is among the finer examples of mid-century Latin American printing out of New York. The multicolor wet-ink registration on the 1950–53 run holds consistently well.