5 Cents - Elizabeth II 2nd portrait, James Cook

The Cook Islands gained self-governing status in free association with New Zealand in 1965, and this issue belongs to the first decimal coinage series the islands produced following that constitutional change. The James Cook theme was a deliberate political choice — grounding the new nation's identity in the Pacific voyages of the 1770s rather than in the colonial administrative machinery that had governed the islands since 1901.

KM#3a distinguishes this from the earlier KM#3, which used a different alloy specification before the copper-nickel composition was standardized across the series.