50 Pesos

The P#73 series belongs to a transitional moment in Mexican monetary policy: the Banco de México had been printing its own notes since the early 1970s, having taken full production in-house rather than continuing to rely on foreign security printers like American Bank Note Company or the British firms that had supplied earlier series. By 1981, the peso was already under pressure from the oil-boom credit expansion that would culminate in the catastrophic August 1982 devaluation and debt crisis, when Mexico became the first country to announce it could not service its external debt — effectively triggering the global sovereign debt crisis of the 1980s.

Notes from this exact period circulated heavily and were quickly superseded by higher denominations as inflation accelerated through 1982–1983. Survivors in any meaningful grade are fewer than the print runs suggest.