50 Escudos

Banco Nacional Ultramarino occupied an unusual position in Portuguese colonial finance — it was a private institution holding the note-issuing monopoly across multiple overseas territories simultaneously, a concentration of monetary authority that had few parallels in European colonial banking. The P#44 series was issued for Portuguese Guinea, where the economic base was thin and note demand correspondingly low, meaning print runs were modest and surviving examples in any condition are genuinely uncommon.

Bradbury Wilkinson's New Malden facility was the default choice for quality colonial currency throughout the British Commonwealth and beyond — their intaglio work was among the finest available, and their security features were sufficiently trusted that rival colonial powers regularly contracted them.