5 Dollars - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait, Pied Cormorant

New Zealand's large-format five dollar coin had a troubled commercial life almost from the start. Introduced in 1999 as part of a native birds series, the public never warmed to carrying something closer in feel to a casino chip than pocket change, and the denomination was discontinued in 2006 with most examples returning to the Reserve Bank rather than wearing through circulation. The Pied Cormorant — a bird with a genuinely wide Pacific range, found from Australia to the Chatham Islands — was one of the later additions to the series.