50 Centavos seal type III

Banco Nacional Ultramarino's 50 Centavos fractional notes of 1914 were a direct response to wartime coin shortages — Portugal's entry into the broader conflict of the First World War created acute hoarding of silver and bronze, and small-denomination paper had to fill the gap. The "seal type III" designation reflects successive overprinting campaigns used to extend the note's authorized circulation period, a common BNU practice that can make precise dating of individual examples genuinely complicated.

Bradbury Wilkinson's involvement gives the note a higher baseline of print quality than contemporary Portuguese metropolitan issues. The firm's intaglio work was considered among the most forgery-resistant available to colonial issuers at the time.