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500 Escudos
| Issuer | Banco Nacional Ultramarino |
|---|---|
| Year | 1959 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Dark olive-brown intaglio note with a guilloche underprint in red and green at centre. To the right, an oval vignette bears a portrait of José Celestino da Silva in military uniform, his name inscribed below. The centre carries the denomination in Portuguese and Chinese characters within an ornate guilloche panel, above the date and place of issue; the Portuguese royal arms appear below. An oval watermark space occupies the left field, flanked by corner numerals and Chinese characters. |
|---|---|
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| Protection description | Portrait of José Celestino da Silva |
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| Comments |
Banco Nacional Ultramarino occupied an unusual position among colonial banks — it held the monopoly on note issue not for a single territory but for most of Portuguese overseas possessions simultaneously, rotating designs and overprints across Angola, Mozambique, Guinea, São Tomé, and others from a shared London-printed stock. This P-25 belongs to the Mozambique series, where Bradbury Wilkinson supplied the bulk of high-denomination paper through the 1950s.
At 500 Escudos, this was a substantial sum in Mozambican daily commerce in 1959 — not a note that changed hands at a market stall.