Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
1 Pataca
| Issuer | Banco Nacional Ultramarino |
|---|---|
| Year | 1945 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | 13 November 1953 |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Pink and dark brown note with an intricate guilloche border enclosing the entire design. At left, an oval vignette bears the bank's circular seal with a steamship at sea, surrounded by the legend BANCO-NACIONAL-ULTRAMARINO and COLONIAS, COMMERCIO, AGRICULTURA. To the right of the vignette, the denomination UMA PATACA and numeral $1 are set against a central guilloche underprint, with BANCO NACIONAL ULTRAMARINO and TIMOR inscribed above. The issue date LISBOA, 8 DE MARÇO DE 1945, decree number, and serial number appear in the upper right, with two manuscript signatures and a repeated serial number in the lower field. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Printed in olive-brown and grey tones, the reverse centres on a large vignette of the Portuguese royal arms — the crowned shield with five escutcheons and seven castles, encircled by a laurel wreath and crossed anchors — set within a fine guilloche frame. Flanking the central vignette are two symmetrical oval panels, each inscribed $1 within intricate lathe-work rosettes. Chinese characters reading 大西洋海外滙理銀行 appear across the top, with the bank name in Portuguese below, and the denomination UMA PATACA TIMOR lettered in a bold cartouche at the foot. |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
The Banco Nacional Ultramarino's Macau branch relied on Lisbon-directed printing throughout the colonial period, and this 1945 issue came off the presses at Litografia Nacional in Porto — a domestic Portuguese printer rather than one of the London security printers more commonly associated with colonial currency of this era. The choice reflects wartime disruption to normal supply chains; access to Bradbury Wilkinson or Waterlow was considerably complicated by the mid-1940s.
Macau's nominal neutrality during the Japanese occupation of surrounding territories gave the pataca an unusual stability for a colonial currency in the region, though the local economy was under considerable informal pressure through 1945.