20 Centavos

Banco Nacional Ultramarino occupied an unusual position in Portuguese colonial finance — it held note-issuing rights across multiple overseas territories simultaneously, and this 1914 20 Centavos piece reflects the wartime scramble for small-denomination paper that erupted across Europe and its colonies when silver and bronze coinage vanished from circulation almost overnight after August 1914.

Bradbury Wilkinson's involvement places it among the more technically accomplished small-change emergency issues of the period. The question of which specific territory this note was intended for is the critical one — BNU issued near-identical low-denomination notes for Angola, Mozambique, and other possessions concurrently, and the Pick 60 designation is the key differentiator here.