500 Australes

Argentina's hyperinflationary spiral of 1989 forced several provinces to issue their own emergency quasi-money when the federal government could no longer guarantee liquidity to the regions. Salta's australes notes were essentially wage-payment instruments — the provincial government used them to pay public employees when transfers from Buenos Aires dried up. They circulated locally by necessity, not by design, accepted in shops largely because workers had no alternative.

The austral itself had been introduced in 1985 to replace the peso argentino at 1,000:1. By mid-1989 it too was collapsing, which makes a 500-austral provincial note from that year a precise artifact of a currency in freefall.