5 Pesos

The Tesoro de la Isla de Cuba issued this note under Spanish colonial authority, at a moment when Cuba's monetary arrangements were increasingly strained by both debt financing and the separatist pressures that would culminate in the Ten Years' War's aftermath and the renewed uprising of 1895. The treasury notes of this series were obligations of the Spanish colonial government rather than instruments of a local central bank — a distinction that mattered enormously to holders when political conditions deteriorated.

Bradbury Wilkinson's engraving quality on Cuban colonial issues of this period is generally high, consistent with their contemporaneous work for other Spanish imperial territories. Pick 39 is the 1891-dated iteration within a longer-running series, and surviving examples vary considerably in condition due to active tropical circulation.