If You Had To Name One Iconic Coin (Or Some) To Represent Australia And New Zealand.

Thought I'd spark a conversation on coins issued for Australia and New Zealand. This can be any coins or token - whether it's pattern, circulation, or NCLT.

If you had to name just one (or a couple) coin to represent Australia and New Zealand - what would they be? Plenty of good choices out there.

Australia

Few iconic ones that came to mind are the holey dump, circulating coins that feature native Australian animals, plenty of commemorative coins and the list goes on.

The two that I pick are as follow:

- 1852 Adelaide pound
- 2021 Indigenous 2 dollar

Reasons why I pick them:

Coins during early 1800s were predominately coins from other countries - English, Spanish, Indian, Portuguese, etc. These are known as proclamation coinage. The first locally made Australian coinage would be the holey dollar and dump but this is based on overstriking on Spanish reales in 1813. This was demonetized in 1829, still not resolving the problem of local coinage. Hence there is a reason why there is a large variety of local tokens struck this era. Bartering in rum was not uncommon either.

The gold rush in 1850s created a large influx of migrants to Australia. Australia, being a British colony had no capacity to mint its own coins during this time. Any gold that was mined had to be sent to London which took significant time to ship back to Australia. This created a problem for workers as there was little coinage to circulate.

This was a major issue in South Australia as many people were leaving to Victoria for the gold rush. An emergency action was taken to address this issue by creating a 'local mint'. This is perhaps the fastest time this went though legislation. An assay office was opened in Adelaide to process gold from Victoria. The first examples were ingot bullion. While this is important, it was not practical.

A new coinage was struck better known as the Adelaide Pound. The Adelaide pound is a classic example of "It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission". (only if housing issue can be addressed this quick!). While it was technically illegal to strike such coinage, it was struck as a loophole bullion. While this served its purpose, many of these were melted down as they were struck with higher gold content than face value! Official mintage suggest a total of 24,648. It is not known how many were melted but survival rate could be in mere hundreds or low thousands. This coin was crucial as this forced Britain to consider establishing a mint in Australia, with Sydney Mint being the first overseas branch to strike it's first gold coin in 1855.

(that is pretty lengthy!)

Second choice

The 2021 2 dollar commemorating the Indigenous Military Service is an iconic coin IMO. If you read early Australian history, many are dark and it is only recent living history that Indigenous people are allowed to vote. There are efforts to reconcile the past but that will take education, time and effort. This particular coin recognizes the contribution of Indigenous people in military - despite difficult history behind it.

New Zealand

Two coins that came to mind:

The 20 cents kiwi (or the dollar) and the Maori warrior on the shilling.

IMO both are iconic representing New Zealand. I'm sure some would argue there are better choices. A bit out of my depth as I'm not too well versed in New Zealand history.

What are your thoughts?