Catalog
10 Avos
| Issuer | Banco Nacional Ultramarino |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Printer | Hongkong Printing Press |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | BANCO NACIONAL ULTRAMARINO DEZ AVOS MACÁU GERENTE 壹毫 |
| Reverse description | Green note dominated by a large central guilloche rosette enclosing the numeral "10" and the legend "DEZ AVOS", flanked by two ornate column vignettes with radiating guilloche sunburst panels. The bank name "BANCO NACIONAL ULTRAMARINO" runs across the upper portion in a ribbon, above Chinese characters reading 大西洋海外理銀行, with "MACAU" (門澳) inscribed in a banner at the lower centre and Chinese denomination characters (壹毫) repeated vertically on both sides. |
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| Comments |
The Banco Nacional Ultramarino's Macau branch issued this fractional note during a period when small change was chronically scarce across Portuguese colonial territories — a problem acute enough in 1920 that paper fractions replaced coin in everyday transactions. The Hongkong Printing Press was a practical choice given proximity; sending work to Lisbon or London would have added months to a process driven by immediate local need.
Pick 11 is genuinely scarce. Low-denomination emergency issues of this type circulated hard and were discarded once coin supplies normalized, not saved.