Collection - Coins and Notes - Diário de Notícias #58 10 Escudos

The 10 Escudos series of the mid-1920s was issued during a period of serious monetary instability in Portugal — the escudo had been introduced in 1911 to replace the réis, but years of wartime debt and postwar inflation had badly eroded public confidence in paper currency. Banco de Portugal was simultaneously managing currency reform pressures and a banking sector stretched thin by speculative lending.

Pick 131 is also notable in the broader context of the Alves Reis affair: the fraudulent overprinting scandal of 1925, in which forged Banco de Portugal notes — legitimately printed by Waterlow & Sons in London — flooded circulation. That scandal directly triggered institutional reforms and new issue controls, making notes from this precise year historically loaded in a way few others are.