Catalog
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| Issuer | Banco de Guimarães |
|---|---|
| Year | 1873 |
| Type | Replica banknote |
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| Obverse description | Letterpress-printed note with an elaborate oval vignette on the left bearing the arms of Guimarães within fine guilloche scrollwork and the date 1872. The central field carries the bold intaglio legend CINQUENTA MIL REIS on a solid panel, above a promise-to-pay text and a lozenge-shaped underprint with the numeral 50. Three manuscript signatures appear at lower right under the heading A GERENCIA. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | BANCO DE GUIMARÃES CINCOENTA MIL REIS 50 000 A GERENCIA Guimarães, 4 de Novembro de 1873 |
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| Comments |
The Banco de Guimarães was one of several provincial Portuguese banks authorized to issue notes under the 1867 banking reforms — a deliberate decentralization that lasted only until Lisbon's political appetite for consolidation reasserted itself. By the 1890s, most provincial issuing banks had been absorbed or wound up, and their paper had been retired. Surviving Banco de Guimarães notes are genuinely scarce, not by collector accident but by historical arithmetic: low original circulation volumes, aggressive redemption campaigns, and the sheer indifference of provincial commerce to preserving paper.
The 50,000 Réis denomination places this at the upper end of practical commercial use — not petty cash, but merchant and inter-bank settlement territory.