Description and research notes
This specimen note represents the five hundred pesos denomination of the Banco de la Republica Oriental del Uruguay, issued under the monetary law of 2 January 1939 and printed by Thomas De La Rue and Company Limited. It is a non-circulating institutional reference example prepared for controlled handling rather than for public monetary use, preserving the full production design standard of the series.
Within the 1939 denomination structure, the five hundred pesos occupied a high tier intended for major accounting, treasury movement, and upper-level commercial settlement. Specimen material of this value functioned as an administrative instrument: a formally invalidated note intended to communicate design authority, security standards, and type identity to official and professional users without introducing any risk of circulation.
This example is Serie B and is immediately distinguishable from Serie A specimen handling variants by its cancellation logic. The obverse does not carry a large diagonal SPECIMEN overprint across the design field. Instead, invalidation is executed through a single red oval printer control stamp reading SPECIMEN DE LA RUE CANCELLED, placed over the lower central area of the face. The cancellation is therefore restrained and localized, designed to render the note permanently non-monetary while leaving the principal portrait, denomination typography, and ornamental framework unobscured for reference study.
The note carries the controlled all-zero serial format associated with institutional specimen preparation and is numbered as Specimen No. 45, printed at the lower margin. The serial and specimen number together establish this piece as a tracked example within a controlled specimen distribution sequence, with the Serie B designation explicitly printed on the face.
The obverse design presents a formal intaglio composition centered on QUINIENTOS PESOS, with the issuing title of the Republica Oriental del Uruguay spanning the upper field and a large unprinted oval reserved for watermark visibility at left. The portrait vignette at right is embedded within a dense security line field, with architectural and industrial motifs behind the figure reinforcing modern state capacity and institutional authority in late interwar Uruguay.
The reverse displays the complete agricultural allegorical scene associated with the type, executed to full production standard, and notably carries no additional SPECIMEN overprint or cancel marking. This absence is itself an important handling detail: it confirms that, for this Serie B specimen variant, De La Rue’s cancellation protocol concentrated authority marking on the face through the oval cancel stamp rather than repeating control devices across both sides.
Certified PMG 64, this specimen preserves strong production clarity and remains a precise documentary record of how Uruguay’s issuer and its security printer differentiated specimen handling formats within the same Pick number. It stands as a primary institutional artifact of the 1939 series, capturing both the design language and the administrative control practices that governed high-value reference currency in the late interwar period.