500 Pesos Bolivianos

Bolivia's 1981 currency still carried the "Pesos Bolivianos" denomination, a unit the country had used since 1963 — but not for much longer. Hyperinflation was already accelerating, and by 1984 the situation had collapsed so completely that the Peso Boliviano was replaced by the Boliviano at a rate of one million to one. Notes from this final period of the denomination circulated in an economy where price instability was already outrunning the printing schedule.

Thomas De La Rue's production is competent but unremarkable for the series. The watermark is the sole security feature — thin protection for a note whose real vulnerability was macroeconomic, not counterfeit.