1/2 Penny - Elizabeth II 1st Portrait, Mule

The "mule" designation here refers to a pairing of dies not intended for production use — in this case, the obverse carrying Mary Gillick's first portrait of Elizabeth II was used alongside a reverse die past its scheduled replacement, or in some documented Commonwealth instances, mismatched entirely from a different denomination's die pairing. New Zealand's decimal transition was already underway by 1965, making this the penultimate year of halfpenny production before the series was abandoned ahead of the 1967 changeover. A coin produced this late in a discontinued series, from an anomalous die pairing, almost certainly never saw meaningful circulation.