Description and research notes
Partial issued note of El Banco del Chaco’s 1 Peso Moneda Nacional Oro, dated 1 Octubre 1884 and printed by Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co., London, for the Villa Ocampo branch under the Ley de Bancos Garantidos provincial charter. The vignette centers on an allegory of Agriculture symbolizing prosperity and labor, flanked by a dog and bull for loyalty and strength—one of BWC’s finest small-format engravings for South America.
Although the upper-right corner is missing, this early-serial piece (No. 05056, Series I) retains the full portrait and guilloche architecture, confirming plate alignment and press depth identical to the later intact note 15849. It demonstrates how provincial Argentine banks adopted London engraving precision while applying local iconography tied to regional progress.
El Banco del Chaco operated within Argentina’s fragmented 1880s banking system, when provincial institutions issued gold-backed paper convertible on demand. Under this charter the Chaco branch financed frontier settlement and export agriculture, embodying the optimism of the northern provinces before the 1890 crash. Cataloged Pick S1566 / Bauman CHA-01a.
Rarity: the entire PMG census lists only two graded examples of Pick S1566 (VF 10 and VF 15). With both serial 05056 (fragmented) and 15849 (complete) now documented in this collection, they represent the only illustrated and confirmed survivors. This fragment therefore stands as a research cornerstone for the type, bridging catalog theory and tangible evidence of one of Argentina’s rarest 19th-century provincial notes.