Help With East Timorese Notes

Hi jay, and welcome to the forum.

The notes are from the old Portuguese Colonial administration and have dates on them: the 50 escudos is dated 1963, the 100 escudos is 1967. Though dated in the 60's, these notes continued to be issued right up to the Indonesian takeover in 1976. The "Japanese" writing will be a variant on Chinese.

Those notes aren't in top condition; a common fate for paper banknotes from equatorial countries. In that condition, they're not that valuable, I'm afraid. My banknote catalogue (2002 ed.) gives values of 25¢ and 50¢ in VG (the lowest catalogued grade) for your two notes.

Post-independence, East Timor now uses US banknotes for paper money, and a mixture of coinage: US cents and new East Timorese centavos, which circulate at par (1 centavo = 1 cent). Once things stabilize economically, they'll presumably disconnect from the US$ and start issuing their own banknotes - probably in escudos again.