20 Escudos

The Banco Nacional Ultramarino occupied an unusual position in Portuguese colonial finance — it held note-issuing rights not just for one territory but across multiple overseas possessions simultaneously, a franchise arrangement that made its metropolitan and colonial emissions easily confused in contemporary records. This 1921 emission for the metropole came from Bradbury, Wilkinson's New Malden works, a British security printer that handled a substantial share of Portuguese-related paper at the time.

Pick 23 is scarce in any grade. The 1920s saw repeated currency instability in Portugal, and notes of this denomination were heavily circulated before successive monetary reforms pulled them from use.