Around 1862, the Dunedin postmaster started perforating the Chalon Head stamps so that the stamps did not have to be individually cut from the sheets with scissors. It was not until 1864 that New Zealand stamps were officially perforated.

Several perforation methods were used - including comb, rotary and line perforating machines. The nature of these machines, the design of the stamps, and the technique of sometimes feeding several sheets at once through the perforation machine meant that it is quite rare to find a well centered copy of these stamps where the perforations have not encroached into the design.

The twopence stamp was still the most common and there are many varieties of this stamp available showing the gradual wear of the printing plates and ink and paper variations.

In 1862 the Otago Gold Rush resulted in paper shortages which meant that extremely thin and unsuitable paper was used for the printings that year. As a result, those stamps are thin, almost transparent. The Gold Rush and the switch to compulsory prepaid postage caused a dramatic increase in demand for postage stamps at this time.

A new fourpence stamp was introduced in 1865 to cover the increased cost for faster postage to the United Kingdom via Marseilles. This was initially rose coloured, but was quickly changed to yellow to avoid confusion with the penny red.

From 1871 the colours of the penny, twopence and sixpence stamps were rotated when it was discovered that a chemical reaction with the blue twopence turned the stamp brown so it could be passed off as a sixpence stamp. The penny stamp was now brown, the twopence orange and the sixpence blue.