5 Patacas Banco Nacional Ultramarino

Banco Nacional Ultramarino held the note-issuing concession for Portuguese Macau through much of the twentieth century, a privilege originally granted in 1902. By 1924, the pataca had been formally pegged to the Hong Kong dollar at par, a relationship that would later drift and eventually be codified differently — but at the moment this note was printed, the two currencies were effectively interchangeable across the Pearl River Delta trading world.

Thomas De La Rue produced the plates in London for a territory they had never set foot in, a common enough arrangement for colonial currency printing of the period. Pick 8 is among the earlier surviving Macau issues and turns up rarely in any grade.