500 Patacas Banco Nacional Ultramarino

By 1963, Macao's economy was running heavily on gambling revenues and entrepôt trade with mainland China, and a 500 Pataca note represented serious purchasing power in a colony where most daily transactions happened in far smaller denominations. Bradbury Wilkinson produced the series to their usual exacting standard — the firm had been printing colonial currency for British and Portuguese territories alike since the nineteenth century, and their intaglio work held up well against the humidity that plagued paper currency in South China.

Four distinct signature combinations are recorded for Pick 52, suggesting the note remained in issue long enough to cycle through multiple board appointments at the Lisbon-directed bank. Francisco José Vieira Machado appears on all four pairings — an unusual degree of continuity for a senior signatory.