1000 Dobras Vasco da Gama

Vasco da Gama never set foot on São Tomé — the islands served as a provisioning and slave-trading depot along the routes his voyages helped establish, not as a destination in themselves. By 1990, commemorative silver issues from small Lusophone nations had become a reliable hard-currency earner, with Banco Central contracting production largely for the collector export market rather than domestic circulation. Few of these ever traded hands in São Tomé.