Catalog
20 000 Dobras
| Issuer | Banco Central de S. Tomé e Príncipe |
|---|---|
| Year | 1996-2013 |
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| Value | 20 000 Dobras (20 000 STD) |
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| Obverse description | Red, olive-brown and blue-black on multicolour underprint. A vignette of the São Tomé Oriole occupies the left centre, while a portrait of Rei Amador appears at right against a guilloche-enriched background. The national arms are positioned at upper centre right. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | A panoramic intaglio-printed vignette of the Cidade de Santo António waterfront occupies the left and centre of the note, with palm trees in the foreground and colonial-era buildings along the shoreline rendered in red and grey-blue tones. A large multicolour numeral "20000" with colour-shifting ink appears at lower right, set against a guilloche underprint with latticework borders on both sides. |
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| Comments |
São Tomé and Príncipe has issued its own currency, the dobra, since 1977 following independence from Portugal, but the denomination structure was forced upward repeatedly by inflation — the 20,000 dobra note being a direct consequence of that pressure. A monetary reform in 2010 redenominated the dobra at 1,000:1, replacing it with the second dobra, which effectively rendered this entire series obsolete almost overnight.
Thomas De La Rue's involvement here is unremarkable for the region; they printed the majority of Lusophone African issues through this period. The long production window — nearly two decades on a single design — reflects both budget constraints and the limited print volumes typical of a country with a population under 200,000.