50 Escudos

The Banco Nacional Ultramarino was Portugal's primary instrument of colonial finance, and by 1920 it held note-issuing authority across multiple overseas territories simultaneously — Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé, and others — which means identifying which territory a given BNU note was issued for requires careful attention to overprints and payable clauses, not just the issuing bank's name. Pick 54 sits within the Mozambique series for this period.

The 1920 date places this note in a period of significant exchange rate instability, as the Portuguese escudo had only replaced the real in 1911 and was already under severe inflationary pressure following the First World War. Colonial branch notes carried added uncertainty in circulation given the lag between Lisbon policy decisions and local monetary conditions in Lourenço Marques.