5000 Cordobas

Nicaragua's 1985 5000 Córdobas was printed against a backdrop of hyperinflationary collapse — by mid-decade, the Sandinista government was issuing notes in denominations that would have been unimaginable ten years earlier, largely to finance the Contra war while foreign exchange reserves dried up. The Canadian Bank Note Company had a long relationship with Central American issuers, and their Ottawa plant handled several Nicaraguan high-denomination runs during this period.

Watermark security was increasingly nominal by this point; inflation was outpacing counterfeiting as the primary threat to the currency's integrity. The 5000 Córdoba note was itself obsolete within a few years, superseded by the 1988 monetary reform that introduced the New Córdoba at a conversion rate of 1,000 to 1.