1000 Cruzeiros Thesouro Nacional, 1st print, Autographed

Brazil's wartime finances leaned heavily on ABNC-printed currency throughout the early 1940s, and this 1000 Cruzeiros note is among the higher denominations to carry handwritten authorization signatures — a practice the Tesouro Nacional maintained for select issues as a control measure against unauthorized duplication. The "autographed" designation refers to those manuscript signatures applied by treasury officials, not pre-printed facsimiles, making each example technically unique in that narrow sense.

Victor Meirelles is best known as a 19th-century academic painter, one of the founders of the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes. His involvement here is as a design source rather than direct commission — ABNC adapted existing imagery from his work for the engraved vignettes.