AardHawk

Sorry to throw the cat amongst the pigeons, but all you fellas are way off with your number of varieties. According to my september 1976 copy of Coin monthly in an authoritist artical by A.R.Alexander, 'Further Varieties of the 1902 Penny' there are in fact two distinct varieties of high tide penny and thirteen low tide date varieties. A.R.Alexander in collaberation with A.M.Lisk went on to produce a series of articles during 1977 on modern british pennies detailing every variety in the series from 1895 to 1967. Freeman didn't come close.

I seem to remember reading a report in Croydon's local newpaper the Advertiser some time in the 1970s, that an enterprising local builder had been paying his men in sovereigns, that have a face value of one pound, thus avoiding paying tax and NI. Apparantly the Inland Revenue had taken him to court, but lost the case, so the law was speedily changed.

As an (aged) IT guy I can appreciate the clean simplicty of Jon's site. I wish they were all that good. The 'John Dean' refered to was the first editor of 'The Australian Coin Review' and his little book 'The 1965 Australian Coin Varieties Catalogue' draws heavely on that publication, and is well worth hunting down. It does come up on US and Australian ebay occaisionally, together with 'Fosters Catalogue of Australian Coin Varieties' of c.1965, Robert L Clarke's 'The Coins of British Oceania' 4th edition 1968 and finally the 3rd edition of 'The Guidebook & catalogue of British Commonwealth Coins 1649 - 1971' by Jorome Remick & others. There are a few more sites that you should also check out. The Australian Numismatic Society http://www.the-ans.com/ The Tasmanian Numismatic Society http://www.vision.net.au/~pwood/tns.html Mike Locke California Gold http://www.calgoldcoin.com/ All of these have great Australian predecimal information. Regards John H.

There are six varieties of Australian 1943 Penny. One minted in Melbourne, Two minted in Bombay and three in Perth. For varieties collectors the Australian predecimal coinage is among the most interesting. You should check out Jon Saxtons excellant site at http://www.triton.vg/. Go down the bottom of the page to get to the coin stuff.

Josie, checked the six that I have, and they are all the same even lettering. Not that I understand what it says.

Oops, forgot the 1957, which is the other major variety. Obv 1, 86 border beads, second upright of N in SECOND to right of bb (when viewed from centre of coin) as 1956. Obv 2, 87 border beads, second upright of N in SECOND to left of bb (when viewed from centre of coin) as 1958. I dont know the relative rareties. All four of mine are obv 2.

Well said Josie. Anyway, back to NZ 3d's. There is only one real variety, other than date varieties and one clogged die (maybe) variety in the whole threepence series 1933 to 1965 less 1938 (none minted), and that is the 1956 'strapless' (scarce). The clogged die is the missing lozenge after the date for 1942 (scarce), and the date varieties are as follows. 1935 wider spaced 35, 1941 wider spaced 41 (scarce), 1942 closer spaced 42, 1942 wider spaces 42, 1945 low 5, 1945 high 5, 1946 upright 6. All in all quite an interesting series to collect as are the other denominations.

I don't think a new coin mag stands a cat in hells chance of succeeding. There is too much competition from the internet these days, which Coins & Medals and Coin Monthly didn't have when they started in the mid '60s. Both of those magazines grew becoause of the immenent change to decimal coinage. Coins and Medals was sucessful pre 1975 because of David Sealy's Coin Varieties column. When that had gone it morphed, eventually into Coin News, which is a woeful publication. Coin Monthly grew in the 1970's through a series of features on british coin varieties. When that subject was exhausted by the end of the '80s there was nothing left and it folded in 1992. Even with Coin Varieties and E.S.Cole in C&M and the efforts of Ron Stafford, V.R.Court, A.R.Alexander, John Antony and many others in CM there were a lot of lean copies published. I have, with a couple of exceptions all of these and doubt that there is more than 300-400 pages worth looking at. Chris prehaps you should look to aquiring the rights to all these articles and publishing them in book form. Judging from the prices for copies of Peck and Freeman there should be a bit of a market out there.

You all had me excited there for a moment! There are only two varieties of 1911 penny. 1. 1A 180 bt. I of BRITT right of bt (Hollow neck). I of IMP to bt. 2. 2A 181 bt. GRA: BRITT colon to gap & closer to A. IMP: colon to bt. I of BRITT to gap (Rounded neck). I of IMP right of bt. The "Hollow Neck" variety has been known about at least as early as the lat 1960s. This variety is also common to other 1911 coinage. As to rarity, Salzman rates it as Common (1,000,001 - 3,000,000) where as V.R.Court from his survey of £9,000 worth of pennies taken between 1968 to 1972 (see Coin Monthly Sept 1972 Major Varieties of U.K. Pennies 1902 - 1967 Part 2) says that of 4,542 1911 pennies surveyed only 37 had hollow necks and he estimated therefore that 188,000 had been minted. This would suggest that these were the product of two obverse dies. This feature was then incorporated in coinage from 1913 onwards. DaveG38, for your info, my copy of Salzman which is a first edition was published in 1982, copyrighted in 1981, and according to the acknowledgement took five years to compile. I hope this doesn't confuse things even more!

The old coin mags are a wonderful resource. The early editions were being published only a couple of years after Peck and before Freeman. You can see where a lot of his info came from. When you consider that a years magazines are available on ebay for £5 plus £5 pp, I do wonder why more people dont snap them up. Prehaps they just dont know whats in them.

Sorry about that. I can confirm type (ii) having recently unearthed it myself. Happy hunting.

Sorry to revive this topic. I keep meaning to reply to this post, but time moves on and I find other things to do. Anyway, none of the varieties mentioned in this thread are unknown. All of them have been recorded by David Sealy in his Coin varieties column in Coins and Medals and Coins in the late sixties and early Seventies and also by others in Coin Monthly during the same period. One of David Sealy's readers, Mr V.R.Court reported to him (Coins Jan 1970) that he had sorted through 240,000 halfpennies 'culled over a period of a year (July 1968-July 1969)' and found some 350 1957 flat sea halfpennies out of c.13,646 1957 halfpennies which comprised of the following date varieties and numbers. (i) Pointed 7, pointing to a bead, 98. (ii) Pointed 7, pointing to right of a bead, 22. (iii) Pointed 7, pointing to left of a bead, 110. (iv) Pointed 7, pointing to centre of a space, 39. (v) Blunt 7, pointing to a bead, 11. (vi) Blunt 7, pointing to right of a bead, 10. (vii) Blunt 7, pointing to left of a bead, 60. The conclusion drawn, bearing in mind the total mintage of 1957 halfpennies (39,672,000) was that 1322 dies were used for the total reverse minteage and that 35 dies were responsible for the flat sea mintage (c.30,000 coins per reverse die). In other words some 10 reverse dies were used to produce the type (i) and 2 for the type (ii) etc. These figures do seem to fairly represent the rarities of these coins. I think it should be pointed out that the four varieties previously attributed were all reported by David Sealy and his readers in some of his earlier columns and in the 1970 Coins annual. Sorry should be 1,365 not 1,322. Don't know where that came from.

xxx xDecimal_Mintage_Figures.htmccc xDecimal_Mintage_Figures.htm

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Yes more than happy to send them to you Chris. Give me the address. I am currently working my way through a 3Kg bag of 5Ps collected from change between c.1993 and late 2000 in and around the City, and am looking out for Josie's 1991 date variety. No luck so far.

Hello all, first post, though I have been lurking here for some time. Anyway back to Chris's question. I am in the habit of chucking any loose change I have each day, apart from pounds and 50p into a box, so I thought it was about time I emptyed it again to see what was what. So for change collected between c.Jan 2001 and Feb 2007 I have; 1990, 83 round edge and 1 square, 1991, 47 rounded and 0 square, 1992, 28 square and 1 rounded 1993 onwards are all square I should note that there does appear to be a degree of roundedness, some being markedly more chamfered than others.