20 000 Réis 8th. print - Chapa 8

Banco de Portugal's 20,000 Réis notes of this period circulated at the top of the denomination ladder during the final years of the Réis system — the currency Portugal had used since the medieval period and would formally abandon in 1911 with the introduction of the Escudo at a conversion rate of 1,000 Réis to 1 Escudo. At that face value, this was not pocket change; it was a note handled by merchants and institutions, not by ordinary wage earners.

Chapa 8 denotes the eighth printing plate iteration of this design, a cataloguing convention Banco de Portugal used to track successive plate states as engraved lines wore and replacements were made. Plate-specific attribution matters here because condition and impression quality vary noticeably across chapas in this series.