1 Centavo Ovar

Ovar's 1921 cédula is one of hundreds of small-denomination emergency notes issued by Portuguese municipal chambers in the years immediately following World War One, when a severe shortage of low-value coinage left daily commerce effectively paralyzed. The Banco de Portugal could not produce enough small change to meet demand, and the government authorized — then largely ignored — a patchwork of local paper substitutes that varied wildly in quality, authorization, and redemption reliability.

Municipal cédulas from smaller towns like Ovar were printed in very limited runs and redeemed locally, which means survival rates are low not because of heavy wear but because most were either lost in everyday transactions or destroyed once the coinage shortage eased through the mid-1920s.