1 Real

Banco Hipotecario de Tucumán was one of the short-lived provincial banking experiments that emerged in Argentina during the fragmented years before any semblance of national monetary organization. The bank operated under a mortgage-lending mandate — "hipotecario" in name and purpose — which made the issuance of circulating paper notes an unusual extension of its function. Whether this 1 Real actually circulated widely or served a more limited local transactional role is unclear, but the province of Tucumán at this period had virtually no external printing infrastructure, making a local Tucumán imprint genuinely notable.

Provincial Argentine notes from the 1840s are among the most fragile survivors in South American notaphily — thin, locally produced paper, minimal security features, and a public that trusted silver coin over any paper promise.