5 Dollars - Elizabeth II 3rd Portrait, Captain Cook

New Zealand's 1992 commemorative program marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus's 1492 voyage — an odd hook for a Cook-themed coin, but the broader Pacific quincentenary framing gave regional mints justification to issue their own commemoratives. The Reserve Bank had been steadily reducing its circulating commemorative program through the early 1990s, and pieces like this were increasingly aimed at collector sets rather than general commerce.

IRN Endeavour's 1769 transit-of-Venus expedition remains the primary historical anchor for Cook's connection to New Zealand — his first landfall at Poverty Bay in October that year was the first documented European contact with the islands.