Catalog
500 000 Intis segmented foil security thread
| Issuer | Banco Central de Reserva del Peru |
|---|---|
| Year | 1988 |
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| Printer | De La Rue (Thomas de la Rue; Thomas De La Rue & Co.; TDLR), London, United Kingdom (1821-date) |
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| Obverse description | Predominantly blue and orange intaglio print on a multicolour guilloche underprint. Portrait vignette of writer Ricardo Palma at right, rendered in fine line engraving; the Peruvian national arms at centre, flanked by ornate guilloche panels and a vertical segmented foil security thread at left. Three facsimile signatures appear below the arms, with the titles DIRECTOR, PRESIDENTE, and GERENTE GENERAL. |
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| Obverse lettering | BANCO CENTRAL DE RESERVA DEL PERU QUINIENTOS MIL INTIS 21 DE DICIEMBRE DE 1988 500000 500000 500000 (Translation: Central Reserve Bank of Peru Five Hundred Thousand Intis December 21st, 1988) |
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| Comments |
Peru's inflation crisis of the late 1980s was among the worst in Latin American history — by 1990, the cumulative rate had exceeded two million percent. The 500,000 Intis denomination is a direct artifact of that collapse; the Inti itself had replaced the Sol in 1985 at 1,000-to-1, and was in turn replaced by the Nuevo Sol in 1991 at another 1,000,000-to-1. A note worth half a million of a currency already born from devaluation tells the arithmetic of the crisis plainly enough.
The segmented foil security thread — rather than the simpler embedded continuous thread used on earlier Inti issues — reflects De La Rue's mid-to-late 1980s push to upgrade anti-counterfeiting specification on high-denomination emergency printings for hyperinflationary markets.