Description and research notes
Unissued 20 Centesimos note dated 1 July 1872 from P. Valdez & Co. of Tacuarembo (then San Fructuoso), printed by Lit. F. Bauer, Rincon 72, Montevideo. This brown 20 Centesimos complemented the green 10 Centesimos and formed the upper value of Pablo Valdez’s private small-change series. Valdez, a transport entrepreneur and industrialist, operated stage-coach lines, managed livestock branding records, and owned the Jaboneria de Pablo Valdez soap factory near Arroyo Tranqueras. His enterprise issued these notes to supply everyday liquidity in the wake of the Revolution of the Lances (1870-1872) when coin was scarce.
Design: single-sided brown lithograph with a neoclassical vignette of two youths carrying a sickle and sheaf of grain, symbolizing cooperation and labor. The value VEINTE CENTESIMOS appears within rosettes marked 20; the Bauer imprint sits at base. The wide left margin and binding perforations show that these were bound in counterfoil books for controlled issue. The note measures roughly 141 by 57 mm, matching the size data preserved in Uruguayan references.
Considerably scarcer than the 10 Centesimos, this 20 Centesimos note represents one of the few surviving examples of private merchant scrip from Uruguay’s frontier economy. Together, the two Valdez denominations illustrate how local initiative substituted trust and commerce for absent national coinage in 1870s Uruguay.