20 000 Réis 8th. print - Chapa 8m

Banco de Portugal turned to Bradbury Wilkinson repeatedly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and this 1906 issue is one of the firm's more workmanlike Portuguese commissions — competent intaglio, but not among the printer's most ambitious output. The "Chapa 8m" designation refers to the plate iteration rather than a distinct series, a numbering convention Banco de Portugal used to track progressive plate changes and reissues within the same fundamental design without formally retiring the note type.

The 20,000 Réis denomination sat near the top of everyday transactional values in Portugal at a time when the milréis system was already attracting criticism for its unwieldy large-number arithmetic. Within eight years this format would be obsolete — the escudo replaced the réis in 1911 at a rate of 1,000 réis to one escudo, collapsing four-digit and five-digit denominations into single-digit ones overnight.