1 Dollar - Elizabeth II 3rd Portrait, Kakapo Bird

New Zealand's kakapo dollar arrived just as the species was careening toward extinction — by the mid-1980s, the total known population had collapsed to fewer than 50 individuals, most of them male. The Department of Conservation had not yet launched the formal Kakapo Recovery Programme, which wouldn't begin in earnest until 1995. Minting a coin celebrating a bird this close to disappearing was either prescient advocacy or bleak timing, depending on your view.

KM#57 replaced the earlier florin-sized format when New Zealand decimalized its coin sizes in 1986, making this the first dollar struck to the new specification.