Mr T

Yeah the Royal Mint in London definitively shut its doors in... 1976 I assume - the last coin was struck in November 1975. Great, thanks @AardHawk - much appreciated!

Yeah I'm looking for who struck how many sets in each year. So far I found that 74,293 sets were struck at Llantrisant in 1973-1974 and that apparently took the total to 730,610 (so presumably another ~25,000 were struck in 1974-1975). I imagine the previous ~656,000 were struck both at London and Llantrisant from 1970 (or maybe even 1969 onwards). I got the 1973-1974 mintage from the August 1976 Australian Coin Review but I don't think previous issues have all Royal Mint reports unfortunately. And it seems like London was definitely being wound down by that point - I need to re-read A New History of the Royal Mint to see exactly what was happening...

Nice - I don't collect Italian coins but it looks like a good reference.

So the Australian Coin Reviews I dug up say a few bits and pieces were struck in London in 1973-1975 but by then, 1970 proof set production was happening at Llantrisant.

Hm, I have a couple of Australian Coin Reviews that have Royal Mint reports in them (1973/74 and 1975/76) so I might need to dig them out. Anyone know if Coin Monthly had annual reports from 1968 to 1975?

Oh great, thanks for the information! I don't know, I would have thought using two mints was inefficient, though it was 750,000+ sets from memory which is high even by today's standards.

I saw someone on Coin Community recently say that an old Coin Monthly had something about the different rim width 1967 halfpennies being struck at different mints. Would anyone happen to remember that article? And more broadly, are there any other articles that mentioned what was struck at the two mints and when? I've always taken the simplistic approach that all the predecimal stuff was probably struck at London, but what I saw now has me wondering if maybe the 1970 proof varieties are down to the two mints as well.

I checked my Groom book the other day and it was listed there as unconfirmed too - so possibly non-existent.

I wonder why it disappeared from CoinCraft then.

Anyone got a CoinCraft to see what year it's meant to be?

As Rob says, I assume ebay just makes it 20% because that's the easy thing to do. Here in Australia ebay adds 10% GST to all international purchases - I don't know the ins and outs of the GST but I know it doesn't apply to everything.

Apparently this is mentioned in the 1998 Coincraft but I've never heard of it before - anyone know of any other references to it?

Anyone other threepence lovers out there? I'm slightly doubtful about this one as most of the 1937 varieties seem to be on the obverse from memory.

There we go - not easy to google. Thanks.

Thanks - I suspected that I hadn't been exceptionally lucky in finding a 2+C.

Can anyone tell me any recent auction sales of this coin? I remember at least one (Colin Cooke maybe) but I can't track it down.

Davies lists the 1937 1+B threepence as unconfirmed - does it exist? I've looked at a few 1937 threepences though not a great amount but haven't come across one.

I recently acquired a 2+C 1896 shilling - does anyone know how rare it is compared to the 2+D? I ask because it's a VG coin at best so I normally wouldn't add it to my collection, unless I'm unlikely to find better.

Probably if an example was to be sent to the British Museum they wouldn't have fished one out of a bag - hopefully they'd send a nice coin. I'm not sure what their policy is though their collection does seem incomplete. And I don't think the 1920 penny was special (I doubt they'd care about a slightly different denticle arrangement) but I guess there was enough of an interest in coins to keep adding to the collection.

In older versions of Freeman the price list said there was one known example in the British Museum - this should probably have been a foot-note as the the price list is omitted in newer editions. My 2c on Freeman 189: http://www.coincuriosity.com/view/british-pennies-1920-1921.html

I use the little plastic bags that coins come in from banks for bulk storage - I think the plastic is inert (I've been using them for years without any trouble).

For standard coins the mint will produce them as required (central bank dictates demand I think) and they can sit in storage until commercial bank branches request them (but they just request money in general and get what they get).

It is sometimes frustrating collecting coins that money can't buy but it sure is satisfying ticking those boxes.

I didn't think New Zealand ever had sterling silver coins. Maybe try the tissue test to be sure? If it looks white through a tissue it's silver; if it looks grey it's cupronickel (from memory).

It would take a lot to split me from a rare coin - anything rare enough to pull that kind of money would be too worth keeping for me.