10 Vatu Papilio toboroi

Papilio toboroi, the Bougainville butterfly for which this coin is named, was described as a species only in 1975 — the same year Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides) was moving toward independence, which it achieved in 1980. The Reserve Bank began issuing collector-focused wildlife series partly to generate foreign currency revenue, a fiscal strategy common among small Pacific island nations with limited export bases.

Silver-plated copper-nickel issues of this type circulated almost exclusively as numismatic exports rather than domestic tender.