1 Centavo Monforte

Monforte is a small concelho in the Alto Alentejo, and its câmara municipal was among dozens of Portuguese local authorities that issued cédulas — low-denomination emergency paper — during the acute coin shortage that followed the First World War. The Banco de Portugal had failed to keep fractional coinage in circulation, leaving municipal chambers, commercial associations, and even private firms to fill the gap with their own scrip from roughly 1917 through the mid-1920s.

At 1 centavo, this is the smallest useful denomination such a body could issue — worth almost nothing even at the time of printing, which is precisely why so few survived casual handling.