1 Dollar - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait, Smaug the Terrible

Issued under a licensing agreement with Warner Bros. to coincide with The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug — filmed largely at Weta Workshop facilities in Wellington — this piece is legal tender in New Zealand but was never intended for circulation. The pad-printing technique applied over the aluminium bronze blank allows photographic-quality color reproduction that conventional minting cannot achieve, at the cost of durability; the printed layer is vulnerable to handling wear in ways that struck relief is not.