Question: NZ Florin Mintages

When you say "reasonably cheap", what are you comparing it to? Remember, when collecting darkside coins, you must "unlearn what you have learned" with regard to price, rarity and mintage. As always, a coin's price is a function of supply and demand.

Supply: Not long after the coin was made, New Zealand's currency was reformed, so many of these coins would have been put away after only a short time in circulation. Furthermore, these coins are made of cupronickel, so were not prone to being melted down. Indeed, they continued to circulate as a 20¢ coin after decimalization in 1967, and could probably still have been found in circulation right up to 2006 when the old-size coins were formally withdrawn. So most of the mintage should still exist.

Demand: Who wants to collect New Zealand coins badly enough to "need" one of these coins? New Zealanders, for starters, but there probably aren't anywhere near 100,000 coin collectors in NZ. Some Australian collectors might also be interested in acquiring a complete date set, as well as Empire and Commonwealth collectors in other countries, but their numbers would be few.

Conclusion: 100,000 should be more than a high enough mintage for a New Zealand coin.

New Zealand's economy is small, and was even smaller back then. It didn't need too many coins to keep it going, especially in comparison with larger economies like the USA, Great Britain or even Australia. Some years, they only needed just a few coins. You've probably noticed that for many of the years in New Zealand, there are gaps - no coins were issued at all. They just didn't need any more made in those years.

Fiji is an even more extreme example of this. An even smaller economy, with (usually) even smaller mintages (100,000 would be considered "typical" for Fiji), and far more "gap years" when no coins were made.