100 Escudos Pattern

Pattern issues from the Imprensa Nacional – Casa da Moeda in the late 1980s were produced as internal circulation trials ahead of the bimetallic 100 Escudos that entered production in 1989. The bimetallic format itself was adopted partly in response to persistent counterfeiting of the earlier cupro-nickel 100 Escudos coins. This piece, unlisted in Gomes, likely represents a compositional or dimensional trial that was either rejected or simply never submitted for formal cataloguing — not unusual for INCM pattern work of this decade, which was rarely documented systematically outside internal mint records.