50 Centavos

Banco Nacional Ultramarino, the Portuguese colonial bank of issue, turned to Bradbury Wilkinson in London for this 1914 fractional note — a common arrangement for Lusophone colonial territories whose currency printing infrastructure depended almost entirely on British security printers. The 50 Centavos denomination places it among the smaller-value notes issued as Portugal's colonial monetary system was straining under the pressures of the First World War, which disrupted shipping, colonial trade, and specie flows across Portuguese Africa and Asia simultaneously.

Bradbury Wilkinson's intaglio work from this period is generally clean and technically consistent, though notes of this size and denomination from 1914 BNU issues are notoriously difficult to find without significant handling wear — low face value meant heavy use.