2 Dollars - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait

The Australian two-dollar coin was introduced in 1988 to replace the paper note of the same value, a cost-driven decision by the Reserve Bank — polymer notes were expensive to produce at low denominations and coins last roughly 30 times longer in circulation. The fourth portrait of Elizabeth II, sculpted by Ian Rank-Broadley, replaced Raphael Maklouf's third effigy from 1999 onward and was adopted across virtually all Commonwealth coinage within a few years. Rank-Broadley's design was notably more naturalistic than its predecessor, a deliberate departure from the idealized treatments that had dominated royal portraiture on coinage for decades.