Denomination
$2
$5
$10
$20
$50
Christchurch Post Office
Christchurch Post Office
Christchurch Post Office
Christchurch Post Office
Christchurch Post Office
1NZLA
1NZLB
1NZLC
1NZLD
1NZLE
11,021
7,254
5,775
2,567
863
The above five cards were produced for the trial of
the GPT system of Phonecards in New Zealand. Two military installations
were chosen as the trial sites, as these sites were both considered
controllable because of their restricted nature. They were Burnham
Military Camp and Wigram Air Force Base, both located near Christchurch.
The cards were produced in sheets of 56
(7x8) with various numbers of each denomination. Below is an example of
a sheet and I have shown the layout of each value.
| 50 | 50 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| 50 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| 2 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
This gave 22 x $2, 14 x $5, 11 x $10, 6 x $20 and 3 x $50 per sheet.
Approximately 1,300+ sheets were
produced and cut to produce the individual cards. A large number of
these cards were never used and subsequently they were destroyed,
leaving the quantities
listed at the top of the page as the actual
numbers issued. Most of the cards in circulation today are used,
leaving very few mint copies, especially the $50 card.
There were 10 additional sheets
produced. The back of these sheets is completely white, with no
other markings. Eight of these sheets were given to various top
Telecom employees and other companies.
Two sheets were cut up and
used for promotional work. A few of these individual cards are in
the hands of private collectors.
This is an example of the $10 card from one of the two cut sheets.
The back is white and there is no notch.
All the issued cards were produced with the deep
blindman's notch, and as it turns out, this was the only issue to have
this particular style of notch. All other issues had a shallower notch.
However, there are a few reporting's of the $5
card in the 1989 First Satellites Issue having this deep notch.
See 1989 First Satellites Issue for
an example of this card.
Each card was sold in a small cardboard wrapper, illustrated above, of which two different printings are known. The first used thin, white, shiny cardboard, while the second was thicker, off-white and less shiny.
There were 60 presentation packs produced. They contained the five cards
plus a printed card commemorating the Trial Issue. The majority of these
were presented to Telecom Officials
and Defence Force Personnel. There
are two different known versions of this pack. One has rounded gold
corners, while the other has square.
Rounded Gold Corners