500 Escudos

By 1973, Angola was deep into the colonial war that had been grinding since 1961, and the Banco de Angola was still issuing notes under Portuguese authority with no indication of how little time remained for that arrangement. This 500 Escudos note was printed just two years before the April 1974 Carnation Revolution in Lisbon ended the Estado Novo regime and set decolonization in motion — notes from this final series circulated into a period of extraordinary political turbulence.

Bradbury Wilkinson had handled Angolan currency printing for decades by this point, operating from their New Malden facility in Surrey. The escudo was replaced by the kwanza in 1977, two years after independence, rendering this series obsolete within a very short window of circulation.