5 Centavos

Banco Nacional Ultramarino was the privileged issuing bank for Portugal's overseas territories, and this 1914 5 Centavos belongs to the Mozambique series authorized as WWI disrupted normal coin supplies across the empire. Small-denomination fractional notes like this one were stopgap instruments, pressed into circulation because bronze and nickel coinage couldn't be minted or shipped reliably during wartime. Bradbury, Wilkinson produced the series in London — an arrangement that would have caused bureaucratic anxiety had German submarine activity worsened appreciably.

Fractional notes from this issue are genuinely scarce in any condition; most were used hard and discarded once coin circulation normalized.