Three Cook Islands Dollars Banknote

Country: Cook Islands
Issuer: Ministry of Finance and Economic Management
Issue year: 2021
Type: Horizontal note
Material: Polymer
Size: 140 × 67 mm
Signature: Hon. Mark Brown, Minister of Finance (who has also been Prime Minister since 1 October 2020)
Serial: AA 0 2 7 4 0 3

The story

The new $3 was launched on 3 August 2021 during Constitution Week. It replaced a design first issued in 1987 and keeps the popular image of Ina and the shark. In the legend, Ina is a voyager who rides a shark. When she cracks a coconut on the shark’s head, it raises a bump, which is still called “Ina’s bump”. The first design was painted by Rick Welland, a California artist who lived in Rarotonga for 28 years. The back shows a god carving and a man in a fishing canoe at sunrise. The note was among 23 nominees for the International Bank Note Society’s Banknote of the Year.

Front

Engraved figure of Ina with long flowing hair, holding a coconut, draped at the waist and riding a leaping shark through breaking waves, white surf and spray, wavy line background, diamond-shaped clear window with sun and wave motif, small triangular clear window with a dot, script text “Cook Islands”, signature with the caption “HON. MARK BROWN, MINISTER OF FINANCE”, and a Cook Islands Maori legal statement (“KO TEIA KURA E KURA AKAMANA IA I RARO AKE I TE TURE MONI E $3 TORU TARA”).

Back

Carved statue of a Polynesian god with large eyes and an ornate patterned base (catalogues call it Te-Rongo, the issuer calls it Tangaroa), man in a traditional outrigger fishing canoe on the water at sunrise, wavy line background, diamond window with a black sun-and-waves print, triangular window, triangle lattice pattern, orange sunrise tint, script text “Cook Islands”.