200 Cruzeiros Thesouro Nacional, 1st print, 'Valor Legal'

The "Valor Legal" overprint on this note was a Brazilian Treasury intervention designed to enforce acceptance — at a moment when public confidence in cruzeiro-denominated paper was badly strained by inflation running well above 20% annually through the early 1960s. That one phrase, stamped onto ABNC-printed stock, effectively made refusal of the note a legal offense.

Three signature combinations span this emission, with Octávio Gouvêa de Bulhões appearing across two of them — he served as Finance Minister under Castelo Branco after the 1964 coup, giving the later series an unexpected historical footnote. The print run across series 671–1570 is substantial, and circulated survivors typically show heavy center folds consistent with the denomination's active use before the 1967 cruzeiro novo reform retired the series.