Mr T

I remember a book being written in 2012 or so that said all but three countries (or something like that) had been invaded in some way or other by the British - I don't remember them all but I think Mongolia was one and one of the land-locked ones in South America too. Anyway, Jerome Remick's book, while out of print, I think probably covers all the Commonwealth countries, territories and settlements etc.

Got a link to the original story?

Possibly a report for a previous or following year has the other 5,000?

5,500 sounds more believable (coin collecting was very popular at that time so 500 wouldn't have been enough) - what year annual report are you looking at?

I remember a few years ago a friend of a friend saying they found a double-headed coin in change - a magician's coin or whatever I'm sure - but they said they spent it. They only mentioned it to me because they knew I was a collector.

Thanks all - I think Davies says the design is a slightly different says but I think the denticle count being the same is telling.

Does anyone have an image of one? It's the 1 of 1921 to a gap and is the rarer type. I want to count the denticles on the reverse (it's 189 on reverse C) but the only high-resolution images I can find are of 3C coins.

Ebay changed the rules at some point to only allow numerical grading for coin in slabs (might have been in America only when I read about it).

Where did you hear about it?

I don't remember exactly - might have been in the book The Gold Sovereign?

I would pay good money for a decent reference on Franklin Mint issues but as time goes on that seems less and less likely.

I don't collect Papua New Guinean stuff myself so haven't come acquired any of its Franklin Mint struck coins, but it wouldn't surprise me. Further on the Cook Islands coins though, the 1977 10t and 50t pieces seem quite plentiful on ebay. Also, I'm told that at least towards the end, the Franklin Mint stuff was made to order i.e. you'd register your interest then when the interest period had closed sets were produced. No idea what sort of contract they had with the governments but it could well have been that the governments ended up with the surplus/cancelled/unpaid for coins, and with nothing better to do with them they just circulated them.

I am also a little suspicious about whether any of the Franklin Mint coins ended up in circulation. A number of years ago I purchased some bulk lots of Cook Islands coins (not sure where the seller got them but they were in big enough quantities, and they had lots of other bulk foreign stuff, that I assumed they were rejects from a bank or a rolling company or some charity). There were lots of standard coins but also a handful of 1977-1981 Franklin Mint coins in there as well. It's a shame no one has put together a good reference book on the matter. I haven't seen a 1995 proof 100 kina either, though I don't collect much Papua New Guinean stuff (just the occasional coin that appears in change).

They were modified dates? That was my guess too.

The 1982 and 1983 are very rare (200 or fewer sets of each type produced in those years?); the others are obtainable though in increasing rarity I think. An ebay seller told me that when the price of silver got high, unsold (I think) sets (probably all Franklin Mint sets) were broken down and the silver coins sold off, which probably explains the glut of Coins of All Nations sets with mixed years you see on ebay.

Seller's premium I can understand but buyer's premium...

I think more than just a freedom of information request is needed - at least in the early days all that was recorded was output in a calendar year (which is often a good enough approximation) but to find the truth you'd need to dig through the die production, usage and destruction register(s) to find out what dies were used and when. In the latest Australian Coin and Banknote Magazine Howard Hodgson finally put the mystery of the 1927M sovereign to bed - reports say a few hundred thousand were struck but further investigation showed they all struck in January 1927, most likely before 1927-dated dies arrived in Australia. It was a note accompanying the coins sent to London for the Trial of the Pyx that actually confirmed that all of the coins were struck before 1927-dated dies arrived in Australia. While London-struck coins didn't have the issue of a multi-month sea journey to complicate things I'm sure die production was not always in sync with the calendar.

I feel your pain - among other things I collect coins of the Cook Islands and Solomon Islands and almost all of my gaps are coins made for sets by the Franklin Mint, often with mintages of less than 1,000.

It's out: https://www.sovr.co.uk/pdfs/david-iverson-jubilee-hd-half-sovs.pdf

I wouldn't be buying it, though I wonder if it's poorly-struck? The details are generally terrible but not all over.

From the halfpennies post some close-ups of the 1861, 1956 and 1957 coins. From the pennies post some close-ups of the 1860, 1875 and 1883 coins.

Can you post all of the penny and halfpenny years? They all look pretty worn so probably don't have much value but if any are of the rarer types they might be worth something.

I am aware of the variety (probably from the same Australian coin forum you saw this) - I don't think the old obverse was used beyond 1898 but I don't know.

Are you going to publish somewhere?

At the end of the day I want a nice coin and I'm not fussed on whether it's wear or circulation.