1000 Dobras

São Tomé and Príncipe gained independence from Portugal in July 1975, and the Banco Nacional was established almost immediately as the new state's sole monetary authority — replacing the colonial Banco Nacional Ultramarino, which had issued escudos. The dobra was introduced at parity with the escudo, and this 1977 series represented the first substantive domestic monetary infrastructure for a country with a population under 80,000 and an economy built almost entirely on cocoa.

Bradbury Wilkinson handled security printing for numerous post-colonial African states through the 1970s, and the technical specification here is unremarkable — single watermark, cotton substrate, no metallic thread. The P#55 designation places it in the first independently issued series, before the 1982 revision.