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5 Sucres
| Issuer | Banco del Pichincha |
|---|---|
| Year | 1907-1908 |
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| Composition | Cotton paper |
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| Obverse description | Black intaglio print on white paper. At left, an oval vignette with a bust portrait of Simón Bolívar in military uniform facing right, surrounded by fine guilloche work. The central vignette depicts a farmer plowing a field with a horse-drawn plow, rendered in detailed intaglio engraving. The bank title EL BANCO DEL PICHINCHA arches across the top, with the denomination CINCO SUCRES in bold lettering at center-right, serial number at upper and lower left, and the place of issue QUITO below the central vignette. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Printed entirely in red-orange on white paper, the reverse is dominated by a large central vignette of the Ecuadorian national coat of arms — an oval shield with a condor atop, set within an elaborate symmetrical guilloche frame. Flanking panels carry the denomination numeral 5 and the word SUCRES repeated within ornate lathe-work borders. The bank name EL BANCO DEL PICHINCHA is inscribed across the top of the central panel, and the overall design is executed in dense geometric lathe-work typical of the period. |
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| Comments |
Banco del Pichincha was founded in Quito in 1906, making this among the earliest notes it ever issued. Waterlow & Sons supplied the printing, as they did for dozens of Latin American institutions during this period — the bank had little choice but to contract abroad, since no Ecuadorian facility could produce security-printed currency of acceptable quality at the time.
Ecuador's banking system in 1907 was fragmented, with several private banks holding note-issuing privileges simultaneously. The Pichincha's early notes competed directly with those of the Banco Comercial y Agrícola de Guayaquil, an institution that would later become notorious for its role in Ecuador's catastrophic monetary crisis of the 1920s.