10 Dollars Millennium

New Zealand's Millennium note was a commemorative issue rather than a regular series replacement — the Reserve Bank released it as a limited circulation piece to mark the 2000 transition, though it remained legal tender. Note Printing Australia had been producing New Zealand's polymer notes since the country switched from paper in 1999, so this issue came early in that relationship.

The polymer substrate itself was the security feature the RBNZ leaned on most heavily at the time, having adopted Guardian polymer technology developed by the Reserve Bank of Australia. The clear window on this denomination was integrated into the design rather than treated as a retrofit — a distinction worth noting for collectors assessing printing quality around the window edges.