50 Cents - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait - Year of the Dog - Colored

Australia's lunar coin program, initiated by the Perth Mint in 1996, runs on a twelve-year cycle tied to the Chinese zodiac — making 2006 the second time the Dog year had appeared in the series, and the first struck in the Mint's transition to its current fine silver standard. The colored issues from this run were applied using a pad-printing technique that the Perth Mint was refining through the mid-2000s, and early production pieces occasionally show minor ink registration variance at the border of the color field.