2 Mil Réis Thesouro Nacional, 3rd print

Brazil's Imperial Treasury turned to Perkins, Bacon & Petch repeatedly through the mid-nineteenth century, a relationship built on the firm's steel-engraving technology and its well-established reputation for producing notes resistant to counterfeiting — a genuine concern in a country where provincial forgeries of low-denomination paper circulated freely. This particular issue is the third printing of the 2 Mil Réis type, distinguishable from earlier printings by subtle plate differences that specialists have catalogued but that remain easy to overlook without direct comparison.

The "Thesouro Nacional" designation marks this as a direct treasury emission rather than a Banco do Brasil issue — a distinction that mattered politically during the Empire's ongoing debates over centralized versus bank-issued currency.