NZ currency....

Hypothetical situation (set in the US): you go into a store, pay for your purchase in cash and the change due back to you is less than a dollar. Think about it for a second - what kind of change do you expect? Well, because it's less than a dollar you know that it will be in coins. I NEVER thought about this kind of thing until I moved to NZ; here you expect change back in coins if said change is less than $5. This is because the smallest bill denomination is $5 and in lieu of smaller bills/notes there are $1 and $2 coins.

The bill denominations are what you might expect: 5, 10, 20, 50, 100. But they differ slightly in size: the larger the denomination the larger the bill. I love the beautiful colors!

The coin denominations are a different story than those of US currency. Once upon a time there were 1c and 5c NZ coins but they've been taken out of circulation. So the smallest coin denomination you will see around here is 10c. To make matters confusing, at least it was for me at first, the 10c coins are copper in color and close to the size of US pennies. I had to continually remind myself that these copper beauties were 10c not 1c!

Up from there you have 20c but not 25c as in the US. Then there is 50c and of course the $1 and $2 coins I mentioned earlier. Below you can see both sides of each coin currently in circulation. How I've learned to love those gold coins when I see them rolling around in my little wallet! :)