Catalog
500 Soles
| Issuer | Banco La Providencia |
|---|---|
| Year | |
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| Value | 500 Soles |
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| Obverse description | The denomination '500' appears in large numerals within ornate guilloche panels at upper left and right, flanking the issuing bank's title inscription across the centre. The central vignette presents a pastoral Andean scene with llamas and herders set against a mountainous landscape, while an allegorical female figure with children rendered in intaglio occupies the lower left and a caduceus within a circular guilloche frame fills the lower right. Two manuscript signatures appear at the lower centre, with the place of issue, Lima, and obligation text inscribed in letterpress. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | PERU EL BANCO LA PROVIDENCIA PAGARA A LA VISTA AL PORTADOR QUINIENTOS SOLES EN MONEDA CORRIENTE LIMA DIRECTOR GENERAL GERENTE GENERAL 500 |
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| Comments |
Banco La Providencia was a private Peruvian commercial bank operating under the financial liberalization policies of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, when Lima's banking sector briefly flourished before the catastrophic credit collapse triggered by the War of the Pacific. Notes from this institution are genuinely uncommon — the bank did not survive the economic destruction of that conflict, and its paper circulated in a window too narrow to produce large surviving populations.
The American Bank Note Company printing places this squarely within the period when virtually every serious South American issuer went to New York for prestige and security printing. ABNC's contract work for Peruvian private banks of this era is well documented, though individual issue quantities for Providencia specifically are not recorded in the surviving literature.