Dig up your old coins, says Reserve Bank

The old coins (top) and the new coins that replaced them (bottom).

The Reserve Bank is urging New Zealanders to check under sofa cushions and rummage through glove boxes for discontinued coins - before they are useless.

Currency manager Brian Lang said the average household had had an astonishing 185 coins floating around before the introduction of new 50c, 20c, 10c and 5c pieces.

More than a billion silver coins had been issued by the bank since 1967, Mr Lang said.

So far only about 270 million had found their way back to the bank.

At the end of this month, the old coins would no longer be legal tender, meaning retailers would not have to accept them, Mr Lang said.

Chief executive of the New Zealand Retailers Association John Albertson said the association was encouraging its members not to give out the old coins as change.

- NZPA