20 Escudos

Banco Nacional Ultramarino occupied an unusual position in Portuguese colonial finance — it was a private institution, not a central bank, yet held the exclusive right to issue currency across multiple overseas territories simultaneously. This note was issued for Angola, one of several BNU-administered territories sharing closely related series designs during this period, each distinguished primarily by territorial overprints or specific series designations rather than fundamentally distinct plate work.

Bradbury Wilkinson's intaglio printing is characteristically fine, and the New Malden facility produced currency for dozens of colonial and post-colonial issuers through the mid-twentieth century. Pick 36 falls within a transitional window — Angola's currency arrangements would be reorganized in 1962 with the introduction of a new escudo series.