20 Centavos

The Banco Nacional Ultramarino issued this note for Portuguese Guinea, one of several small-denomination colonial scrip pieces authorized in 1920 to address a chronic shortage of fractional currency in the territory. Coins of small value rarely survived the humidity and logistical difficulties of West African colonial circulation, making low-denomination paper a practical necessity rather than a policy preference.

Pick 52 is among the scarcer BNU Guinea fractionals of the period. Attrition rates on notes this small were brutal — lost, destroyed, or simply worn to illegibility within months of issue.