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480 Reis Sociedad de Cambios
| Issuer | Sociedad de Cambios |
|---|---|
| Year | 1856 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | A central vignette of a cow occupies the midfield, flanked by the issuer title «SOCIEDAD DE CAMBIOS» across the upper register and repeated in ornate cursive script along the left margin, rotated 90°. The face value «480 REIS» appears near the upper edge and along the side borders, with series letters printed at all four corners and a handwritten serial number at upper left. The manuscript date «MAYO de 1856» is inscribed at the lower centre, completing the note's primary textual content. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse is essentially unprinted, bearing only a faint rectangular border underprint in pale ochre tones visible through the plain paper stock, with no text or vignette. |
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| Comments |
The Sociedad de Cambios was a short-lived Chilean private exchange house operating in the mid-1850s, one of several quasi-banking entities that filled the void left by the absence of a formal national bank. Chile would not establish the Banco de Chile until 1893, leaving the field open to private issuers of varying reliability. Notes from this issuer are rare enough that catalog data remains thin — the S-prefix Pick reference signals provisional attribution rather than a fully documented series.
The 480 reis denomination is an oddity in Chilean monetary history, reflecting the lingering influence of Portuguese-derived currency reckoning in South American commercial practice before full decimalization took hold.