50 Colones

The Canadian Bank Note Company supplied El Salvador's higher denominations through much of the late twentieth century, and this 50 Colones is a product of that long-standing contract relationship. By 1995 the colón was under sustained pressure — dollarization debates were already circulating in policy circles, and El Salvador would formally abandon the currency in 2001 under the Monetary Integration Law. Notes from the final years of issue consequently had shorter effective circulation lives than their earlier counterparts in the same series.

The single watermark security feature was modest even by mid-1990s regional standards. Guatemala and Costa Rica had moved to thread-embedded paper by this point.