1000 Angolares

The 1944 Banco de Angola 1000 Angolares sits at the top of the wartime series issued under Portuguese colonial administration at a moment when Angola's economy was being reorganized to support Lisbon's neutrality-era trade arrangements. Thomas De La Rue handled the entire high-denomination production from London, which is unremarkable in itself — De La Rue had printed Angolan colonial issues for decades — but the timing meant these notes were produced while London was still under blackout conditions.

High-denomination colonial notes of this period are disproportionately scarce in circulation grades. Most were used in interbank and government transfers rather than retail trade, keeping them out of ordinary hands and, paradoxically, out of collections.