2500 Réis

Banco Nacional Ultramarino, chartered in Lisbon in 1864, operated as the note-issuing authority across Portuguese overseas territories well into the twentieth century — but which territory this particular 2500 Réis issue served is worth pinning down, since BNU simultaneously maintained separate note series for Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé, Timor, and others, often using closely related Bradbury Wilkinson plates that are easily conflated in collections.

Bradbury Wilkinson had a long relationship with Portuguese colonial issuers by 1909, and their intaglio work for BNU is generally fine. The réis denomination system itself was abolished in mainland Portugal in 1911 with the republic's monetary reforms, making this a late-series colonial survival of a unit already dying at home.