Catalog
4 Centavos
| Issuer | Banco Nacional Ultramarino |
|---|---|
| Year | 1914 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Blue-green on multicolour underprint. The Portuguese Coat of Arms appears at right, with a red seal of Type III at bottom centre. Issuing authority and denomination inscriptions frame the design, with the date "5 de Novembro de 1914" included in the text. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | BANCO NACIONAL ULTRAMARINO 0$04 BRADBURY, WILKINSON & Co. GRAVADORES LONDRES (Translation: National Bank Overseas 0$04 / Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. Engravers London) |
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| Comments |
Banco Nacional Ultramarino issued this note for Portuguese Angola during the acute coin shortage that struck the colony in the early years of the First World War. Copper and bronze coinage effectively disappeared from circulation as metal was redirected and supply lines from Portugal became unreliable — small-denomination paper emerged as the practical stopgap.
Bradbury, Wilkinson's involvement is unremarkable for BNU colonial issues of this period; the London firm handled much of the bank's lower-denomination emergency paper. The 4 centavos denomination itself is the curiosity — an odd fractional value that maps directly to the pre-decimal coinage it was replacing.