25 Patacas

Waterlow & Sons printed this issue for Macau during the final year of the Second World War — a period in which the Portuguese enclave had maintained nominal neutrality while surrounded by Japanese-occupied territory. That precarious position kept the colony's financial infrastructure functioning independently of Lisbon's direct control, and the Banco Nacional Ultramarino operated accordingly, issuing notes to manage a local economy under severe pressure from wartime inflation and commodity scarcity.

P#20 is considerably scarcer than the later Waterlow-printed issues for Macau. Surviving examples in any honest circulated grade are not common, and the 1945 date places this at the very end of a troubled interval in the colony's history.