How we work with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand

New Zealand does not have a national mint who supplies our coin currency.  Therefore, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand out sources the production of this currency to International Mints.  Our 2006 coins were minted by the Royal Canadian Mint.

New Zealand Post has been authorised by the Reserve Bank to be the official distributor of collectable coin series that have been approved by the Reserve Bank. 

For every coin issue, New Zealand Post takes the time to research mints from all over the world to ensure that we are offering our customers the best quality products available.  The mints that we have worked with include:

• Royal Australian Mint
• Perth Mint
• British Royal Mint
• Royal Canadian Mint
• BH Mayer’s Kunstprägeanstalt GmbH

Recently, New Zealand Post has also been given the authority to distribute collectable bank note sets produced by the Reserve Bank. However, these will only be available for purchase if a special event occurs i.e. a change in the Governor of the Reserve Bank, and will not be an annual release.

 An overview of New Zealand Currency

In ancient times, people had to barter things to trade - for instance, a cow for six pigs. This, however, was clumsy. What if you wanted six pigs but the pig seller didn't want your cow, as he or she wanted some sheep instead, which you didn't have?

That's where money came in. Money is a token or measure that stores wealth. With it, in our example above, the trade could take place. Also with money you can earn now and spend later. Early examples of money were shells and iron nails, as they could easily be counted. In due course, these were replaced by coins made of gold, silver, bronze and copper and much later paper money was developed.

These days you can buy things using coins, bank notes, cheques, or credit cards, or by making an electronic transaction (EFT-POS etc); all are modern ways of moving money around. There's a lot more money around than just cash. In the New Zealand economy now if you add up all the cash and all the other money, such as in bank deposits, it comes to about $100 billion. The value of the bank notes and coins in circulation is much less at around $2 billion. However, despite talk about e-commerce, cash remains very useful for making relatively small transactions instantly and conveniently.