Banknote Billet Argentina 50 pesos 2001

Remarks:

Plis, jaunis et salissures

The 50 pesos "Patacón" treasury bond is a banknote issued in 2001 by the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was issued in a particularly difficult economic context for the country, marked by a major financial crisis that would lead to the suspension of Argentine sovereign debt payments in December 2001.

Faced with a shortage of liquidity in pesos and dollars, several Argentine provinces issued parallel provincial currencies, commonly known as cuasimonedas. The Patacón is one of the most emblematic of these emergency provincial issues. It was accepted as a means of payment in the province of Buenos Aires, particularly for the settlement of provincial taxes and the payment of civil servants.

This banknote belongs to Series A and has a face value of 50 pesos. It is one of the highest denominations of this issue, making it a particularly representative example of the exceptional monetary period that Argentina went through in the early 2000s.

From a numismatic point of view, these banknotes are of considerable historical interest as direct witnesses to an unprecedented economic crisis in Argentina's contemporary history. Their period of circulation was relatively short, as the cuasimonedas were progressively withdrawn from circulation from 2003 onwards, when the national government bought them back as part of the country's monetary stabilisation.

The preservation and study of this type of banknote makes it possible to document emergency monetary mechanisms put in place by subnational entities, a rare phenomenon in modern economic history. The 50 pesos Patacón, Series A, thus represents a first-rate monetary document for collectors specialising in South American numismatics and crisis monetary issues.