50 Centavos

The Banco Nacional Ultramarino issued this note for Portuguese Angola during a period when small-denomination coin shortages were chronic throughout Portugal's African territories. Wartime metal demands had badly disrupted subsidiary coinage supply, and fractional paper — normally an emergency stopgap — became a prolonged fixture of everyday commerce well into the early 1920s.

Pick 64 is among the scarcer fractional issues of this series; the small format meant heavy handling damage in circulation, and survival rates are low even for notes that were technically "in use" only briefly.