5 Pesos

Venezuela's 1860 paper currency was issued under chronic fiscal pressure — the republic had been cycling through monetary crises since independence, and private and quasi-public banks were doing much of the heavy lifting that a functional central bank would ordinarily handle. The Banco de Venezuela did not exist yet; that institution wouldn't be chartered until 1890. Who exactly stood behind this emission at the time of issue is genuinely complicated.

Cotton-substrate notes of this period from Venezuelan issuers are rarely encountered in any condition, as circulation in the tropical interior was brutal on paper currency.