Notes in circulation

From 1890 the bank published a brief balance sheet every month in the Periódico Oficial, including the total value of notes in circulation.

The new Banco Comercial must always have been overshadowed by the other Terrazas-Creel bank, the Banco Minero, and it can be seen that its own issue of notes was remarkably small. It finally merged with the Banco Minero on 1 July 1900^{El Norte, 1 July 1900. Creel had proposed the merger in February 1900 to increase the Banco Minero’s capital assets.} and officials of the latter bank were in charge of the withdrawal of all its notes.

Incinerations

Some notes were withdrawn in the early years of the bank but we only know that $25,000 were incinerated on 23 March 1899^{Report of Interventor Ahumada, 29 July 1899}, $48,075 were incinerated on 8 July 1899 and $200,000 on 24 September 1899. In its Memoria de las Instituciones de Crédito 1897-1899 the Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público reported that up to 31 December 1899 $1,005,000 had been authorised, of which $293,075 had been amortised, $469,710 was in circulation and the remaining $242,215 was in the head office or the branches ^{Memoria de las Instituciones de Crédito 1897, 1898, 1899}. So if these are correct, another $20,000 had been withdrawn some time before the end of 1899.

The following table records the withdrawal and destruction of Banco Comercial notes after its merger with the Banco Minero.

In fact, these records are faulty, as is obvious from the fact that $1, $5, $10 and $50 notes still exist. On 15 January 1920 Juan Creel, from El Paso, wrote to Enrique Creel asking about notes of the Banco Comercial and Banco Mexicano. The notes that he had in El Paso that could be incinerated he had sent to Mexico City to be destroyed, but in Mexico there were some notes that were of the denominations that had been filled up (de las denominaciones cuya emisión está agotada), whilst Sr. Ginther still had $6,600 from the two banks in Santa Rosalía, and he had $2,400 in his office. He wanted to know what to do, since they could not be officially incinerated^{CEHM, Fondo Creel, 251, 64310}. Enrique told him to destroy them, keeping a record of the fact in the bank’s confidential files, without making any entry in the bank’s accounts, and to make up the amount by deducting it from the sale of some securities (unless he had a better idea) ^{CEHM, Fondo Creel, 252, 64599, letter Enrique C. Creel, Los Angeles to Juan A. Creel, El Paso, 19 January 1920}. Juan agreed^{CEHM, Fondo Creel, 251, 64335}.

In March 1931 the Comité Liquidador de los Antiguos Bancos de Emisión started an investigation to determine whether the balance of the Banco Comercial’s notes had been incorporated into the Banco Minero’s balance of outstanding notes, or was included in its “Old Accounts (Cuentas Antiguas)”. If the former was the case, any outstanding Banco Comercial notes would have been demonetized from 1 March 1931 (according to the 30 August 1930 decree) but if the latter, they would still have a value, as not being banknotes but a particular kind of security^{El Revolucionario, 17 March 1931}. Does this suggest that someone still had a substantial amount in these notes?