50 000 Cordobas

Nicaragua's inflation in the late 1980s was catastrophic — the córdoba lost value so rapidly that the government issued this denomination as a stopgap measure while the new córdoba replacement currency was being prepared. The 50,000 córdoba note arrived essentially as monetary triage, not as a long-term instrument. The Sandinista government's financing of the contra war and chronic balance-of-payments deficits had pushed annual inflation past 30,000 percent by 1988.

The Canadian Bank Note Company contract is notable given the political climate — a U.S.-allied printer working for a government the Reagan administration was actively trying to destabilize. The 1990 currency reform converted these at 1 new córdoba to 1,000,000 old, rendering the entire series obsolete almost immediately after issue.