8 Pesos

Venezuela's 1811 emission was among the earliest paper currency issues in South American independence-era history, authorized by the newly declared First Republic just months before its collapse under royalist forces and the catastrophic earthquake of March 1812. The notes were issued by the Junta Suprema de Caracas through what was effectively a war finance operation — the republic needed to fund its armies and had little else to offer but paper promises.

Survival rate is extraordinarily low. The First Republic lasted barely a year, and the returning royalist administration had every reason to suppress these instruments. Most were destroyed, lost, or voided. Genuine examples of this denomination are among the rarest documents of early Venezuelan independence.