1 Peso Oro

Colombia's Banco de la República was established in July 1923, and this note belongs to the inaugural emission — printed before the bank had conducted a single transaction. The enabling legislation, Law 25 of 1923, was itself drafted under direct guidance from Edwin Kemmerer, the Princeton economist whose monetary reform missions reshaped several South American central banks during the same decade.

The American Bank Note Company held a near-exclusive grip on Colombian currency printing through this period. The "Oro" designation was not decorative — it legally distinguished these notes as redeemable in gold-standard pesos under the new banking framework, separating them from the discredited paper emissions of earlier decades.