The Air Series was part of a broader Royal Australian Mint push in the late 2000s to apply pad printing — an industrial process borrowed from the plastics and ceramics industries — directly onto circulating coinage. Getting consistent ink adhesion on a curved aluminium bronze surface at mint production speeds took considerable development time, and the Crimson Rosella dollar was among the first Australian coins to carry coloured decoration as an intended feature of general circulation rather than a collector premium.
The Air Series was part of a broader Royal Australian Mint push in the late 2000s to apply pad printing — an industrial process borrowed from the plastics and ceramics industries — directly onto circulating coinage. Getting consistent ink adhesion on a curved aluminium bronze surface at mint production speeds took considerable development time, and the Crimson Rosella dollar was among the first Australian coins to carry coloured decoration as an intended feature of general circulation rather than a collector premium.