8 Reales

Banco de Venezuela was granted its charter in 1861, making this 1862 note among the very earliest emissions of the republic's first formally chartered commercial bank. The 8 reales denomination is a telling detail — Venezuela was still operating on the colonial real system at this point, nearly four decades after independence, and would not fully convert to the decimal bolívar until 1879.

Three manuscript signatures authenticate each note individually, an arrangement that reflects the bank's administrative structure under a governing junta rather than a conventional directorate. The signature of the Gobernador-Presidente alongside two Administradores del Ramo de Emisión was the control mechanism, not mere formality.

Survival rate for this issue is extremely low — the bank itself suspended operations within a few years amid Venezuela's chronic political instability of the 1860s.