50 Avos

The Banco Nacional Ultramarino, a Lisbon-based colonial bank with note-issuing authority across multiple Portuguese territories, produced this 50 Avos for circulation in Timor — one of its more remote and economically marginal outposts. The Avo denominations filled a practical gap: the territory's trade economy ran on very small transactions, and Portuguese metropolitan coinage rarely made it this far in sufficient quantities.

The Nourse Printing Press attribution is unusual enough to warrant caution — this printer appears in very few colonial currency records, and documentation on its exact role in the 1920 Timor issues remains thin.