2.400 Reis

The Real Erário, Portugal's royal treasury rather than a conventional bank, began issuing paper money in 1797 under emergency fiscal pressure — the crown needed to manage war-related debt without the infrastructure of a central bank. These notes functioned essentially as government drafts, obligation instruments rather than the circulating currency of a modern bank, and the public treated them accordingly with considerable skepticism.

Hand-laid paper with an embossed seal was the sum of available anti-counterfeiting technology at the time. The 2.400 Reis denomination, denominated in the old Portuguese réis counting system, places this squarely before the Napoleonic invasions of 1807–1808, which would devastate Portuguese financial institutions and send the royal court fleeing to Brazil.

Two manuscript signatures per note was the authentication method — slow, labor-intensive, and a telling indicator of how limited production volumes were.