The Kermadec Islands are a subtropical island arc in the South Pacific Ocean 800–1,000 km northeast of New Zealand's North Island, and a similar distance southwest of Tonga. The islands are part of New Zealand and nowadays uninhabited, except for the permanently manned Raoul Island Station, the northernmost outpost of New Zealand.

Polynesian people settled the Kermadec Islands in around the 14th century, but the first Europeans to reach the area—the Lady Penrhyn in May 1788—found no inhabitants. The islands were named for the Breton captain Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec, who visited the islands as part of the d'Entrecasteaux expedition in the 1790s. European settlers lived on the islands from the early nineteenth century until 1937, as did whalers.

The group includes four main islands (three of them might be considered island groups, because the respective main islands have smaller islands close by) and some isolated rocks, which are, from north to south: Raoul Island, Macauley Island, Curtis Island, Nugent Island, and L'Esperance Rock.

The four main islands are the peaks of volcanoes that rise high enough from the seabed to project above sea level. Raoul and Curtis are both active volcanoes. The volcanoes on the other islands are currently inactive, and the smaller islands are the eroded remnants of extinct volcanoes.

The islands have no native land mammals. An endemic bird subspecies is the Kermadec Red-crowned Parakeet. The group has been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because of its significance as a breeding site for several species of seabirds. The introduction of cats, rats, and goats devastated the forests and seabirds. Overgrazing by goats eliminated the forests of Macauley Island, leaving open grasslands, and altered the understory of Raoul Island. Predation by rats and cats reduced the seabird colonies on the main islands from millions of birds to tens of thousands. The New Zealand government has been working for the last few decades to restore the islands. New Zealand declared the islands a nature reserve in 1937, and the sea around them a marine reserve in 1990.

Visits to the islands are restricted by the Department of Conservation. The Department allows visits to Raoul by volunteers assisting in environmental restoration or monitoring projects, and other visitors engaged in nature study. Visits to the other islands are generally restricted to those engaged in scientific study of the islands.

This is the first coin ever produced for the Kermadec Islands.