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20 Avos Banco Nacional Ultramarino
| Issuer | Banco Nacional Ultramarino |
|---|---|
| Year | 1952 |
| Type | Pattern or trial banknote |
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| Obverse description | Olive-green note with a central guilloche underprint flanked by two decorative rosette vignettes; the denomination VINTE AVOS is printed in large letterpress text across the centre, with the issuer name BANCO NACIONAL ULTRAMARINO and MACAU at the top. The Portuguese coat of arms appears as a small engraved vignette at the bottom centre, below the date line LISBOA, 19 DE JANEIRO DE 1952, with signature lines for O ADMINISTRADOR and O GOVERNADOR on either side. Chinese characters for the denomination appear in the upper-left and lower-right corners, and a red SPECIMEN overprint with zeroed serial number 0000000 identifies this as a specimen example. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Olive-green reverse dominated by an intricate guilloche border and underprint pattern; at centre is a circular vignette of the Banco Nacional Ultramarino seal, showing a sailing vessel with the legend BANCO NACIONAL ULTRAMARINO and INDUSTRIA COMMERCIO AGRICULTURA around the perimeter. The denomination 20 AVOS appears in large figures at the lower left, with the Chinese characters 貳毫 at the right, and the bank name is repeated in letterpress at the top. A red SPECIMEN overprint is applied diagonally across the face. |
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| Comments |
The Banco Nacional Ultramarino operated as the privileged issuing bank across Portugal's overseas territories, and this 20 Avos note belongs to the low-denomination fractional series produced for Timor — a colonial outpost where the circulation economy ran on very small transactions. Bradbury Wilkinson handled the printing, as they did for a considerable portion of Portugal's colonial currency work during this period.
The avo denominations are the scarcer end of the Timor series. Low-face fractional notes from remote colonial territories tend to disappear into actual use rather than collections, and survival rates reflect that.