Halfcrowns in Australia

[ozjohn 552]

I found this letter to the editor written in 1913 shortly after the introduction of Australia's own coins in 1910, The letter was written to The Argus newspaper of Melbourne.

What is interesting is that the coins we collect today had real significance the people of the day unlike the worthless pieces of metal that load our pockets today as they were

used in their daily lives as a medium of exchange rather than something that makes up the odd part of the price of an item. The bankers were also lamenting the loss of the halfcrown

which was useful in making up the payroll in the most efficient manner. Imperial halfcrowns circulated in Australia until the early 1930s as UK coins were legal tender at that time. When the imperial

coinage was debased in 1920 post 1919 imperial coins were collected by the banks and returned to the Reserve Bank who in turn claimed compensation from the UK as they were only .500 fine as against .925

of the Australian coins. In 1932 Australia devalued the pound to about 15/- sterling which means imperial coins were worth more in the UK than in Australia even though many were ,500 fine silver. I assume this fact was not lost on the people at the time and the coins probably migrated back to the UK.

[Mr T 169]

Interesting - not sure that the first letter-writer's argument about it being good fit for a decimal system is that convincing though.

[ozjohn 552]

Take your point. I can remember at school a decimal pound. !0/- is .500, 2/- is .100. 1/- ,050 etc. 1/4 of a penny was 1/960 which is close to 1/1000 and depending on how many fathings you would round up or down to get the correct value.. Also the USA has a quarter which is 25 cents and when the UK first decimalized they had a 1/2 penny coin where the halfcrown was 12.5 pence.which would not have made the halfcrown redundant cumbersome perhaps but not completely out of the system. The thing that killed it was the 1,2, 5 sequence beloved by the decimal supporters which has lead to the decline of arithmetic in our schools, To survive in an imperial world your arithmetic skills had to be much more than they are today.

[davidrj 194]

Take your point. I can remember at school a decimal pound. !0/- is .500, 2/- is .100. 1/- ,050 etc. 1/4 of a penny was 1/960 which is close to 1/1000 and depending on how many fathings you would round up or down to get the correct value.. Also the USA has a quarter which is 25 cents and when the UK first decimalized they had a 1/2 penny coin where the halfcrown was 12.5 pence.which would not have made the halfcrown redundant cumbersome perhaps but not completely out of the system. The thing that killed it was the 1,2, 5 sequence beloved by the decimal supporters which has lead to the decline of arithmetic in our schools, To survive in an imperial world your arithmetic skills had to be much more than they are today.

Yes, we learned base 12 and base 20 for Lsd, base 16, 14 & 20 for weights, etc though they were never called that, I had never heard of binary or hexadecimal till many years later

How many folk here remember exercise books with all the Imperial measurements on the back cover? there's one illustrated here

David (in old fogey mode)

Edited January 15, 2015 by davidrj

[Peter 615]

I'm a QS by trade and when I was a trainee I was give some drawings to take off quantities and they were imperial.