2 Centavos - Fundão

Portuguese municipal cédulas like this one were authorized under a 1918 decree that permitted local councils to issue small-denomination paper as a stopgap against the chronic shortage of bronze coinage following the First World War. Fundão, a modest agricultural town in the Beira Baixa interior, was among dozens of municipalities that took up that authority. Most of these local issues were redeemed and destroyed within a few years once coin supply normalized, which is why surviving examples from smaller municipalities are proportionally harder to find than their urban counterparts.