Collection - Coins and Notes - Diário de Notícias #65 5000 Escudos

The 5000 Escudos was the highest denomination in Portuguese circulation during the early 1940s — a note that most ordinary people would never have handled. At a time when Portugal remained officially neutral but economically entangled with both Allied and Axis trade networks, large-denomination escudo notes circulated heavily among the commercial and banking classes managing wartime commodity flows, particularly wolfram, in which Portugal held a near-monopoly position that made it briefly indispensable to both sides.

Printed domestically by the Banco de Portugal's own press facilities in Lisbon, the P#160 series is among the last of the pre-postwar high-value issues before the denomination structure was revised in the late 1940s.