Pitcairn's coinage has no circulation function whatsoever — the island's population has hovered around fifty people for most of the modern era, and New Zealand dollars handle what little local commerce exists. This 1990 issue was struck entirely for the collector market, timed to the bicentennial of the Bounty mutineers' arrival on Pitcairn in January 1790, when Fletcher Christian led the surviving mutineers and their Tahitian companions ashore and burned the ship to prevent detection.
The 155.6g format places it among the large-format silver issues popular with Franklin Mint-style producers during the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period when oversized commemoratives flooded the market and secondary values collapsed almost universally within a decade of issue.
Pitcairn's coinage has no circulation function whatsoever — the island's population has hovered around fifty people for most of the modern era, and New Zealand dollars handle what little local commerce exists. This 1990 issue was struck entirely for the collector market, timed to the bicentennial of the Bounty mutineers' arrival on Pitcairn in January 1790, when Fletcher Christian led the surviving mutineers and their Tahitian companions ashore and burned the ship to prevent detection.
The 155.6g format places it among the large-format silver issues popular with Franklin Mint-style producers during the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period when oversized commemoratives flooded the market and secondary values collapsed almost universally within a decade of issue.