150 Réis - 4 Vinténs of gold Royal Gold Foundry Houses, 1st. Print

These notes — if they can even be called that — are among the earliest paper instruments ever issued in the Americas, and they emerged not from a bank but from the gold foundry houses (Casas de Fundição) scattered across Minas Gerais. The denomination itself describes a fixed quantity of gold dust rather than a monetary abstraction: 150 réis equaling four vinténs was a direct receipt against metal surrendered at the foundry, part of Portugal's attempt to suppress gold smuggling by compelling miners to process their output through official channels.

Francisco Antônio da Silva engraved the plate locally, which makes this a genuinely rare case of in-colony production at a moment when virtually all official printing was done in Lisbon. The year 1808 is significant — the Portuguese royal court had just fled to Rio de Janeiro ahead of Napoléon's invasion, and the sudden transfer of the Crown apparatus to Brazil accelerated exactly this kind of improvised local financial infrastructure.