Catalog
20 Pa'anga
| Issuer | National Reserve Bank of Tonga |
|---|---|
| Year | 2015 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Brown dominant note with a portrait of King Tupou VI at right, set against fine guilloche underprint patterns. The Tongan Coat of Arms appears at lower right, with issuer and denomination inscriptions in both English and Tongan. A 2.0 mm red-to-green colour-shifting windowed security thread is embedded vertically through the note. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Brown and ochre tones frame a central vignette of the National Reserve Bank of Tonga's multi-storey headquarters building in Nukuʻalofa, rendered in fine intaglio detail. To the right, an elaborate sunburst medallion incorporating the Order of the Star of Oceania decorative device is printed over a geometric guilloche field, with a large watermark window at far right. The denomination numeral $20 appears at upper right and within a guilloche rosette at lower left. |
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| Comments |
Thomas De La Rue has printed Tongan currency since the kingdom's first modern banknotes in the early 1970s, and this note continues that unbroken relationship. Tonga's small population and narrow monetary economy mean print runs for any given issue are modest by regional standards — which tends to keep uncirculated survivors relatively accessible while genuinely circulated examples often show heavy handling from informal cash economies in the outer islands.
P#47 carries only a watermark and security thread for authentication — a fairly minimal security specification for a 2015 issue, when many comparable Pacific nations had already moved to polymer substrate with more elaborate features.