50 Pesos Convertibles de Curso Legal 2nd issue

This series was printed entirely within Argentina by Casa de Moneda — notable because earlier high-denomination peso convertible issues had relied on foreign printers. The Convertibility Plan, which pegged the peso one-to-one with the US dollar from 1991, gave the 50-peso note its unusual monetary weight: each note was legally equivalent to fifty US dollars, a parity the government defended until December 2001, when the collapse of convertibility triggered the largest sovereign debt default in history to that point.

Notes from the 1999–2003 print run straddle that crisis. Post-2001 examples may show heavier circulation wear owing to the bank runs and cash hoarding that preceded the corralito — the emergency freeze on bank withdrawals imposed in December 2001.