Papua New Guinea introduced its own decimal currency — the kina and toea — on April 19, 1975, just months before independence from Australia in September of that year. The centenary this piece commemorates is therefore not of PNG's own coinage but reaches back through the colonial sequence: German New Guinea pfennig issues from the 1890s, followed by Australian administration coinage, making this a rare instance of a nation formally commemorating the numismatic history of its own colonizers alongside its own.
At 136 grams, this is a substantial crown-sized piece by any measure. The KM#36 attribution places it among a small run of large-format silver issues the Bank of PNG produced through the early 1990s, most in limited proof editions with negligible secondary-market circulation.
Papua New Guinea introduced its own decimal currency — the kina and toea — on April 19, 1975, just months before independence from Australia in September of that year. The centenary this piece commemorates is therefore not of PNG's own coinage but reaches back through the colonial sequence: German New Guinea pfennig issues from the 1890s, followed by Australian administration coinage, making this a rare instance of a nation formally commemorating the numismatic history of its own colonizers alongside its own.
At 136 grams, this is a substantial crown-sized piece by any measure. The KM#36 attribution places it among a small run of large-format silver issues the Bank of PNG produced through the early 1990s, most in limited proof editions with negligible secondary-market circulation.