500 Pesos El Banco Nacional de Mexico

El Banco Nacional de México was formed in 1884 from the merger of the Banco Nacional Mexicano and the Banco Mercantil Mexicano, and immediately received a federally backed concession granting it privileges no other Mexican bank could match — including the exclusive right to issue notes accepted for tax payments nationwide. That concession made its high-denomination paper genuinely useful to commercial and government interests in a way that rival state banks' issues were not.

The 500 Peso denomination was effectively a wholesale instrument. At a time when an unskilled laborer in Mexico might earn less than a peso per day, notes at this face value moved between merchants, mines, and government accounts rather than across market counters. Genuine circulation wear on examples of this denomination is correspondingly rare.

ABNC printed across a date range of nearly three decades, which means plate wear and successive printings are worth examining closely on any example.