The mighty discontinued 5 cent peice.
A couple of interesting snippets
Between 1967 and 2006 New Zealand has produced 608.5 million 5 cent coins. If they were laid out in a single line, the trail would go from Wellington to Auckland and back eight times. If you stacked them, one on top of each other, the pile would be 730km high. That’s 1910 Sky Towers!
Explain that small value coins are removed when the coin has no spending value - it no longer buys goods on its own. (A more detailed description is that the value of the coin is reduced so much, over time and by inflation, that the coin does not buy goods and is of no real value to consumers. The Reserve Bank estimates that when the 5 cent coin was introduced in 1967 it bought goods that were of value (in today’s terms) of around 65 cents but over the years the 5 cent coin has lost its value.) In 1967 we also had 1 cent and 2 cent coins but these were removed in 1989 because they had lost their value.
A survey of some New Zealanders showed that when 5 cent coins are given as change many people quickly transfer them to a money box or coin storage container at home, or don’t take care of them and lose them easily. Some people even throw them away. There have been televised experiments where 5 cent coins were placed on a street where people could see them, but most people did not bother to bend down and pick them up.
These are indications that the 5 cent coin has lost its value, and so the Reserve Bank (who controls the making and distribution of money in New Zealand) has decided to withdraw it.
Coins lose their value because of high inflation. Now that New Zealand has a lower rate of inflation we are unlikely to need to remove the 10 cent coin for many years.