50 Escudos

Banco Nacional Ultramarino occupied a peculiar constitutional position: it was a private Lisbon-based bank granted sole note-issuing rights across Portugal's overseas territories, functioning as a colonial central bank without ever being one in law. The 1945 date places this 50 Escudos squarely in the wartime and immediate post-war period, when Portuguese Guinea remained formally neutral territory but saw significant disruption to normal trade and currency flows.

Bradbury Wilkinson's engraved work for BNU colonial issues is consistently fine, and the firm handled the bulk of the bank's printing through the mid-twentieth century. P#30 is the scarcer of the two 1945-dated 50 Escudos types — worth distinguishing from P#29 before cataloging.