Mr T

I'll echo everyone else's sentiments and say it doesn't hurt to keep it - I've got more than a shelf of coin and banknote-related books, most of which I don't touch and some of which I've never read but it's good to have a reference library.

Going by these images at they seem to be different: Note the two feathers hanging down behind the helmet - next to the neck and the upward-curling bit of the back of the helmet - one the bottom coin the right feather is much thinner.

I would have said yes - I thought I read that some threepence patterns were produced with third farthing obverse dies. Possibly that was a genuine test but at the same time it's a mule pairing.

There was an article in the Australasian Coin and Banknote magazine a few years about mules which proposed the term 'hybrid' for so-called deliberate mules. I don't think there's any doubt about the obvious mules (dies from different countries or denominations and other combinations that should never have appeared together) but the rest, regardless of intent, aren't truly mules in my opinion - new designs get tried and possibly adopted; making coins is a business and it's not unreasonable to expect a new design to be gradually phased in , or possibly not and just used up to reduce waste.

Thanks again. My 2c is that it does appear to be a separate reverse - check out the bottom helmet feathers - on the circulation reverse the bottom two feathers are of equal thickness but on the proof obverse the right feather is much thinner. Possibly there are are other differences as well but that one stood out.

A .pdf of Iain Dracott's articles was posted somewhere on this forum a little while ago I think.

Thanks all, so it looks 1922 and 1926 are the only years where things were a bit of a mess and by 1927 it was back to a single obverse/reverse pair. Also, my suggestion would be that on https://headsntails14.wordpress.com/george-v-reverses/ the "Potential George V Proof Reverse Gouby d* (Freeman Reverse C*)" be renamed because Gouby c has been called Freeman C* is the latest edition (a mismatch which doesn't make the complicated situation any clearer). Excellent resource anyway.

I've got a fairly worn 1860 threepence and I'm trying to work out which Davies obverse it has. It looks like an obverse 1 as the G in D:G: looks like it has a big right serif and not much of a left serif. The Queen's ear is completely worn away so I can't use that, and the serif on the G seems a little shaky as a diagnostic (prone to die fill or damage I would think). Anyone got any other way of telling the two obverses? I have pretty much no young head threepences to compare with.

I found some decent images of both (never easy): Obverse 1: https://www.gbclassiccoins.co.uk/shop/silver-threepences/1838-queen-victoria-young-head-silver-threepence-scarce/ Obverse 2: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Victoria-1863-Threepence-/361979845871 So it looks like besides the G and the hair above the ear, the obverse 2 R serifs seem to flick up more, and the : at the end of the F:D: seems to cut into the D on obverse 2.

10 million might sound like a lot but the less there are, the less chance of a security company delivering thousands of dollars/pounds worth to anywhere near where you live. I'm very much into Australian decimals and anything with a mintage of lower than 10 million is, anecdotally, difficult to find.

I'm sure GST would be implied - I don't think you're allowed to advertise prices without GST (unless you clearly state GST isn't included). It is a price guide so I guess it wouldn't matter either way but in practice pretty much every price includes GST.

Maybe an E?

Ah yep - I wasn't getting redirected but the direct links show "Does not ship to Australia" in red. edit: actually digging a bit deeper it says will ship to Australia and UK but not to Oceania and Europe - I guess the will not ship to takes precedence.

Computer programmer.

Need to get myself a copy. Have you read Coins, Coinages and Currencies of Australasia by Coleman P Hyman?

The link works but I see nothing for sale and nothing sold.

Got a direct link? I can't find it.

That's a great site (though the maintainer unfortunately died of cancer in the last year or two I think).

Nice, I've tried something similar before but gave up because of the character limit - that little hack to increase it is neat though. This should be stickied.

I had a link to Euro website which I don't recall, but I guess the value would be dependent on the mintage, but it looks like that site only gives the total mintage and not per mintmark.

Right you are - I should have qualified it by saying reverse dies. I think besides the bun head obverse, every obverse after that had initials.

Prone to fill? I don't have any 1862 halfpennies but the reverse G image in Freeman doesn't appear to show a full crop of rocks compared to Malcolm Lewendon's reverse G (though neither of those images are of an 1862 halfpenny - they're 1867 and 1864 respectively).

I thought for a good chunk in the middle there were few or no initials (1870s to 1920s?) but certainly after that mostly there were initials.

Agreed - while there are a lot of Australian decimal varieties to discuss, most collectors I think aren't that interested: predecimal varieties tend to get more coverage, but the last new Australian predecimal variety was discovered in 2003 and I don't think any more will be coming out of the wood-work at this point (meanwhile Victorian bronze seems to have an apparently endless supply of varieties that even 150+ years later keep trickling out). I'm not fully across the the various changes to decimal British coins but I assume the changes haven't caused anywhere near the same level of interest as the switch to decimal currency in 1970? I wonder if New Zealand's coin shrinking in 2006 had a big impact on the hobby.

Probably.