7 | Spanish Banknotes

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500 Pesetas. October 1, 1886. No series. (Edifil 2023: 295, Pick: 37). Extraordinarily rare, especially in this exceptional quality, with all its original finish and without repairs, undoubtedly the finest known example, a dream banknote as it is an extreme quality in a classic banknote of enormous rarity. Good Extremely Fine++. Encapsulated PMG58EPQ. (To give an idea of the rarity, as of November 1, 2024, this banknote is the highest graded in PMG of the five existing ones).

Accustomed as we are to handling banknotes today, it's difficult to understand that in the 19th century, some of them were not intended for circulation among ordinary citizens. This is the case with these 500 pesetas from 1886, a banknote intended for the nobility and payments between large merchants. Skilled and well-paid workers in the Bank of Spain workshop took months to earn this money. Even the engravers, always highly regarded in the industry, couldn't manage to earn one of these notes every month; only the chief engraver was lucky enough to get one.

It seems somewhat contradictory that this 1886 issue was the first to unify the aesthetics around Goya, with the aim of providing a solid, common image for all banknotes now that they were going to circulate throughout the country; most mortals could barely see or use them. A 500-peseta note from 1886 could buy about 5,000 eggs… Thus, it doesn't seem that even a 25- or 50-peseta note would have found regular circulation in the retail trade; a few pesetas were enough to make the purchase. Considering the current price of a dozen eggs, we could think of 500 pesetas from 1886 as the equivalent of about 1,000 euros. However, prices and wages were not as they are today. A master bricklayer wouldn't see such a note for more than a month, and a laborer could only dream of collecting one after many months of work without any expense. A 500-peseta note from that era would buy five elegant, custom-made men's suits, with money left over. Considering its equivalent in 100-peseta gold coins, whose convertibility at the time was quite difficult given the Bank of Spain's resistance to doing so since the early 1880s, we're talking about about 160 grams of gold, about ten thousand euros at today's price. Crazy. Convertibility into silver would be more likely, with its equivalent being about 3.2 kilos of silver, currently worth between two thousand and two thousand five hundred euros. In essence, we could assume that this note would be equivalent to one currently worth between one thousand five hundred and three thousand five hundred euros—an incredible amount of money.

As for the specimen we're offering, it's the best preserved of all those we know of, both inside and outside the PMG registry. A superlative gem.