5 Escudos Pattern

Pattern coinage from Casa da Moeda during this period reflects Portugal's prolonged uncertainty over the practical composition of its circulating 5 Escudos denomination. The Estado Novo government was wrestling simultaneously with rising metal costs and the economic strain of funding colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau — wars that consumed an estimated 40% of Portugal's national budget by the early 1970s. Striking multiple alloy trials across more than two decades was not indecision but fiscal triage.

The Gomes reference R E9.13 places this among a cluster of trials that never reached circulation approval.