500 Pesos

Banco de México was established in 1925 as the country's sole bank of issue, ending decades of competing private bank currencies that had plagued the Porfiriato and revolutionary periods. This 500 Pesos note belongs to the institution's earliest emission series — the notes that first established what a unified Mexican currency actually looked like in practice.

The American Bank Note Company contract was a deliberate choice of political credibility. Mexican authorities needed foreign-printed paper to reassure a public that had been burned by worthless revolutionary scrip within living memory. At 500 Pesos, this was a high-denomination instrument used almost entirely in commercial and interbank settlements rather than retail circulation, which accounts for why surviving examples in any condition are genuinely uncommon.