5 Escudos

Banco Nacional Ultramarino occupied an unusual position in Portuguese colonial finance — it held a monopoly on note issue across multiple territories simultaneously, meaning the same institution was printing currency for Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and others at the same time. This 1921 Timor issue was a low-denomination note serving a territory with minimal banking infrastructure and a population largely outside the cash economy.

Bradbury Wilkinson had a long relationship with BNU and its colonial series. Notes from this period are prone to foxing and edge wear from the tropical humidity of Timor, and genuinely clean survivors are harder to find than Pick's relative scarcity rating suggests.