50 Soles

The Banco Garantizador was one of several private commercial banks chartered under Peru's 1873 banking law, which permitted note issuance backed by government bonds and metallic reserves. The experiment was short-lived. By 1877 the bank was already in difficulty, and the financial catastrophe of the War of the Pacific — which began in 1879 — effectively ended the private banking era in Peru entirely. Notes from this institution had almost no time to accumulate in circulation before the system collapsed.

P#S168 is among the scarcer denominations from this issuer. Printed locally in Lima rather than sent abroad to the major security printers, which was unusual for the period and worth noting when assessing production quality.