25 Patacas Banco Nacional Ultramarino

The 25 Patacas of 1948 belongs to a printing run produced by Bradbury Wilkinson at a moment when Macau's status as a Portuguese enclave was becoming increasingly awkward — the Communist victory on the mainland in 1949 would soon surround the territory entirely, yet the colonial banking apparatus continued issuing notes through London printers as if nothing had changed. Banco Nacional Ultramarino had served as Macau's currency authority since 1902, operating simultaneously across multiple Portuguese overseas territories with shared printing contracts.

The 25 Patacas denomination is the least common in this series, with Pick #39 rarely surfacing in collections outside of specialist Portuguese colonial holdings.