Mr T

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.

Still trying to get my head around it all. https://headsntails14.wordpress.com/george-vi-varieties/ (yes the URL says George VI but it is George V) says 1927 pennies are known with 4+C and 5+C but gives the Gouby references as D+d - I assume they should both be 4+C? Basically, besides the Gouby D* for proofs, there are no varieties of 1927 penny? And do all proof pennies 1927-1936 use the Gouby D* reverse?

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.

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.

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?

Computer programmer.

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

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.

I don't remember what got me started on older coins but having them at the start of every catalogue I've ever bought probably helped. Still strong I'd say - there are still a few societies, regular shows and a local magazine, and of course the Royal Australian Mint is churning out more collector coins than ever. As annoying as the plethora of coloured $2 coins is, it probably helps spark an interest in the man on the street. There is a dedicated subforum on Coin Community too which used to be quite busy (a lot of traffic moved to the hidden sections of https://www.australian-coins.net/ around 2012 - it has been a bit quiet of late but I think it's harder to sustain continuous conversation about 108 years of Australian coinage (not including the gold) compared to many hundreds of years of British coinage).

See this is what I think too - I think that interest in coins is probably declining in general (these days I think this sort of hobby is less common than it used to be and there are lots of other things to keep children entertained) but there are still people who get into it for whatever reason (have a family member that does it, inherit a collection, spot something interesting in change etc) and I don't think coin collecting will ever die out. New collectors will invariably spread to older coinage though - they might get bored of the modern stuff, finish their modern collection or be wealthy enough to want to chase down some of the older rarities.

Australian pennies (struck in London, Birmingham, Sydney and Melbourne) I believe can have slightly different diameters too - effectively the same coin and produced the same way. Possibly a slightly wider collar could cause the metal to spread a little further?

For sure sooner or later - in Australia even ATMs fees have been scrapped (the reason rumoured to be that about 10 years ago cash withdrawals hit their peak). Still, cash has its place and I would be surprised if it disappeared altogether (private exchange of value isn't illegal).

I'm not sure - I think you just need to know (you might see rimmed planchets with no design for sale - see https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/474989091923239723/ for example - there are Australian 10c and 20c planchets with rims but no design).

I remember seeing something similar either here or another forum - it was a a World War I-era ad for something similar that featured a double florin - a coin which obviously hadn't been produced in more than 20 years.