Collection - Coins and Notes - Diário de Notícias #25 50 000 Reis

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.