5000 Escudos 1st. print

The sheer number of signature combinations across this series — more than thirty documented pairings across five issue dates — reflects the administrative turbulence at Banco de Portugal through the early 1980s, a period when Portugal was still restructuring its financial institutions following the 1974 revolution and the subsequent nationalizations. Manuel Jacinto Nunes anchors the first three date groups as governor before Vítor Constâncio, later to serve as Vice-President of the European Central Bank, takes the senior signature from 1985 onward.

The 04.06.1985 Constâncio/Vaz Pinto pairing is catalogued in two signature length variants — short and long — a distinction that matters to specialist collectors assembling complete runs, since both appear under the same date and are easily conflated.