Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
20 Escudos
| Issuer | Banco Nacional Ultramarino |
|---|---|
| Year | 1921 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Portuguese Escudo (1914-1975) |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Dark-blue intaglio print on multicolour guilloche underprint. Portrait vignette of Francisco de Oliveira Chamiço at left, the Portuguese Coat of Arms at lower centre, and the bank seal at right. The overall layout is characteristic of the Bradbury Wilkinson engraving style of the early twentieth century. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Dark-blue and green intaglio print on a fine guilloche underprint. A central circular vignette, inscribed with "BANCO NACIONAL ULTRAMARINO" around its border, encloses an allegorical seated female figure gazing toward sailing ships at sea; the denomination numeral "20" appears in large white figures at both left and right flanking the central medallion. A rectangular panel at the top reads "PAGAVEL NAS DEPENDENCIAS DA PROVINCIA DE CABO VERDE" in two lines, with "CABO VERDE" rendered in a contrasting colour. |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Banco Nacional Ultramarino occupied an unusual position in Portuguese colonial finance — it held note-issuing rights not for metropolitan Portugal but for the overseas territories, functioning as a quasi-central bank across multiple African and Asian possessions simultaneously. This 1921 issue was produced for Portuguese Guinea, a territory then generating modest groundnut export revenues but chronically short of reliable circulating currency.
Bradbury Wilkinson's engraved intaglio work on colonial series of this period is generally among the more technically accomplished commercial printing of the era — their contract portfolio ranged widely across British and Lusophone colonial issuers.
P#36 is scarce in any grade; the Guinea issues of this denomination saw genuine hard use in a humid equatorial climate that was particularly destructive to paper.