Mr T

I'm not sure that it was struck on a Hong Kong 10c planchet: according to http://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces1574.html they're round not dodecagonal. I'm inclined to think it's just been coated in a silver metal though I'm not sure how to non-destructively prove it.

So besides Freeman and V.R. Court there aren't any other penny surveys of interest? Mr T let's start our own Excellent idea.

Actually as I think about this, I wonder if third-party grades can pick up on this. I assume the weight might be a bit off but if it looks alright...

Already got them but I'm quite interested in the raw numbers leading to the rarity ratings.

Off the top of my head I think it is bigger than a sovereign.

Madras struck coins are supposed to have an incuse S on the Queen's neck-line which I don't see. Without the S it would be from Bombay or Calcutta. The catalogue I'm using (by Stevens and Weir) says it's worth 2000 something (pounds I assume) in VF but your coin is Fine I would say, so maybe 1000 pounds.

So besides Freeman and V.R. Court there aren't any other penny surveys of interest?

Ha! The centre of those coins would be somewhat difficult to replicate I think.

Do you have bigger, clearer photos?

Ah thanks. Too bad that information didn't make it into his later publications - I always thought number surviving was an inferior metric to frequency. Yes okay - I see some more have since been discovered now.

Where can Freeman's survey results be found? I think what you've said about die production is correct - the mint would likely have wanted to test die N in a more substantial way than the handful of proofs of the previous year: evidently the new reverse N die was paired an older obverse 11 die (assuming one pair) for this small test run. Whether it was a trial or production run is a bit hazy - it seems likely that it was a trial of sorts but the end result was perfectly acceptable coins that could be released into circulation? Why let that work go to waste? Was the H added to each die individually? As for estimates - Freeman found no London pennies in As for estimates, Freeman found no 11+N coin As for estimates, Freeman found no 11+N coins from 433 1882-dated pennies; InforaPenny found none in 65 1882-dated pennies - we can estimate an upper bound on the number of 11+N coins: they can occur at most once every 499 1882-dated coins which equates to 0.2% of 7,526,400 or ~15,000 coins. Also, what is the story with the 1881 9+M? I see there is a question mark after it in Freeman.

While I agree on the case of the open 3, the narrow date 1877 is a distinct reverse isn't it?

Looks like British stuff only. Annoying - I was hoping for some sort of annual production documents but I guess not.

Is there somewhere online that I can see how many of what coin the Royal Mint has produced in recent years? I'd expect this sort of thing in an annual report but I couldn't see any of that sort of information in them. I'm more interested in the work they've done for other countries but I assume if I can find the mintages for Britain the other mintages should be nearby.

Yeah picking a genuine error can really get difficult. Does the smaller clamp mark bulge the rim too?

What browser are you using? Firefox Hm, I see the same thing in Firefox too. @sound: I think line 63 of global.css needs to be changed from #JNCTopLogo{} to #JNCTopLogo{clear:both;}

Nice overview. What browser are you using?

Hard to say, but I'm inclined to say damaged after striking. If the planchet was damaged before striking, wouldn't the rim not be bulged as it was struck in a collar?

Just saw on another forum the suggestion that holding a running electric toothbrush against the slab will cause the coin to rotate.

I had never noticed this either but I read about it in one of Michael Gouby's books recently. I don't think the reason was given but the point he made was that pennies with the weight you'd expect were definitely tested (the so-called heavy flan pennies mentioned in Freeman) at some point to overcome whatever minting issues they were having at the time.

The 1939 is comparatively low mintage and I think the 1893 (or somewhere in the early 1890s) is fairly low mintage too. I don't think the 1920 or 1921 are exceptionally expensive though. There are 60 or more different varieties of the 1862 of which some are quite rare.

If so, I understand there's a table of outputs towards the back and I'd like to know how many of what denominations (if any) were minted for the Cook Islands and the Solomon Islands.

The Coinage Act 1971 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/24) is heavy reading but section 3 (a), ( and © say that pretty much anything goes if the Queen says so. I don't know how that works in reality but I assume some committee agrees to what the Royal Mint suggests and the Queen just agrees with what the committee says. edit: ignore the previous post - the forum stripped off most of what I said.

In Australia at least 1000000 were "one in a million" with all other notes having 6 digits. The 1000000 notes were created from an extra sheet with serial number 100000 which was guillotined and then each note had an extra zero added with a small manual press. The reason was so that there would be an even number of notes, and, when it came to bundling, the number of notes could quickly and easily be counted by looking at the serials of the first and last notes and subtracting. I assume a similar thing happened in England.

For me as an Australian collector strike is a huge factor - plenty of Perth Mint pennies and halfpennies have indistinct rim beads and ill-defined high points on the portrait. I know coins with such poor strike can be technically uncirculated, but I can't come to considering them uncirculated, let alone paying good money for them because PCGS doesn't mind terrible strike.