10 Avos Banco Nacional Ultramarino

The Banco Nacional Ultramarino served as the privileged issuing bank across Portugal's overseas territories, and this Macau 10 Avos note from 1952 sits at the low end of a series designed to handle small daily transactions in a colony where the pataca had long coexisted uncomfortably with Hong Kong dollar circulation. Bradbury Wilkinson produced work for dozens of colonial issuers during this period, and their engraving quality on low-denomination notes was consistently more careful than the economic importance of the notes warranted.

The avo denominations were particularly prone to heavy wear and outright destruction in Macau's humid subtropical climate — cotton substrate helped, but surviving examples in collectible condition are proportionally scarcer than the higher values in the same series.