The colón was the currency of El Salvador from 1892 until 2001, when it was replaced by the U.S. dollar during the presidency of Francisco Flores. The colón was subdivided into 100 centavos and its ISO 4217 code was SVC. The plural is “colones” in Spanish and the currency was named after Christopher Columbus, known as Cristóbal Colón in Spanish.
SVC Coins
Because the colón replaced the peso at par, 1 and 5 centavos coins issued before 1919 continued to be issued without design change after the colón’s introduction. In 1921, cupro-nickel 10 centavos were introduced, followed by silver 25 centavos in 1943. In 1953, silver 50 centavos were introduced alongside smaller silver 25 centavos. Both were replaced by nickel coins in 1970. In 1974, nickel-brass 2 and 3 centavos coins were introduced, followed by 1 colón coins in 1984.
SVC Banknotes
El Salvador 10 Colones banknote of 1959.
On August 31, 1934, the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador put into circulation the first uniform family of banknotes, replacing banknotes issued by the Banco Agricola Comercial, the Banco Occidental, and the Banco Salvadoreño: the first banknote family consisted of six denominations: 1, 2, 5, 10, 25 and 100 colones. The Central Reserve Bank later authorised the first 50-colón banknotes on May 3, 1979, and the first 200-colón banknotes on April 18, 1997. The last two-colón banknotes were authorized on 24 June 1976, followed by the one-colón banknote on 3 June 1982.
Salvadoran banknotes were notable for having a validation overprint on the reverse: the practice of validating Salvadoran banknotes on a regular basis originated from the time when the government supervised the issue of commercial banknotes, and the date of the overprint on the back was later than the initial date of issue on the front. From 1961 to 2001, the Superintendency of the Central Reserve Bank (Spanish: Superintendencia de Bancos y otras Instituciones Financieras) was responsible for the validation of Salvadoran banknotes.
Validation overprints were discontinued with the latest series of colón banknotes in 1997, when the banknotes were only printed on the authorization of both the Central Reserve Bank and the Superintendency, but the differences between the dates on the front and reverse remained until the dollarization.