£5 bag of mint 1967 pennies

[Guest rcwiow]

During a recent garage clearance I came across a £5 bag of old pennies.

The bag is intact still with its string ties, its lead seal and its '£5 of 1d' red label.

The bag was dry but has obviously been damp at some stage as there is some staining on it.

By careful manipulation of the string sealing the bag it has been possible to extract a couple of the coins for examination.

They appear to be 1967 and uncirculated, I assume these bags were used to distribute the coins to the banks.

They are in perfect physical condition as they appear to be uncirculated, although they have some surface tarnishing.

The question is what sort of value does an item like this have, how do I go about getting it valued and possibly selling it.

[Chris Perkins]

Scrap them. Unfortunately the world and his aunt seem to have kept the abundant canvas bags of 1967 coinage which was all made in massive numbers. Any other year has a slight premium of scrap value (which unfortunately is quite low at the moment), but 67's are all cheap and any collectors that want one have already got one and don't need another 1199 of them.

[scottishmoney]

Lot of people saved them, because they thought they were going to be valuable someday. Problem is, the BRM cranked them out in huge numbers and they will never be rare. I have myself a couple of bags of halfpennies and pennies that total about £50 or so that I wish I could get rid of.

[Chris Perkins]

Another big problem with selling them is the cost of transportation! Postage costs are high for such a heavy item and it renders them uneconimical.

[scottishmoney]

I would like to find a victim to send my coins too, but the postage is quite the killer. Maybe I could put them all in assorted little baggies and hand them out to kids on halloween.

[Chris Perkins]

I once used a couple of bags as 'ballast', put under the spare wheel (at the front) of my rear engined MG to keep the front end on the road. Worked a treat.

[scott]

lol didn't they makes 1967 dated coins all the way through to 1970? i personally dont have an UNC old penny , should go through them and look for error ones though.

[Chris Perkins]

That's right, all dated 1967 and that's one of the reasons there are so many of them.

[Gary D]

That's right, all dated 1967 and that's one of the reasons there are so many of them.

I'm a little surprise that given the number minted there are no varieties especially as they managed 4 halfpenny varieties for that year

[scottishmoney]

I once used a couple of bags as 'ballast', put under the spare wheel (at the front) of my rear engined MG to keep the front end on the road. Worked a treat.

I wonder if the old pennies might make good skeet targets?

[DaveG38]

That's right, all dated 1967 and that's one of the reasons there are so many of them.

I'm a little surprise that given the number minted there are no varieties especially as they managed 4 halfpenny varieties for that year

Gary,

You are quite right that there are no reported major varieties for this date. As part of my research for my book on 20th Century varieties, I investigated reports for the 1967 penny and was unable to find any major types - all being obverse 3 reverse J as per Freeman. However, there are many very minor types so maybe rcwiow could be motivated to go through them all, looking out for:

1. On a number of examples, particularly later coins, there is an incuse line below the helmet peak in the visor, which is at an almost exact right angle to Britannia’s nose.

2. Again, on a small percentage of specimens, the lighthouse is thicker, particularly at the top.

3. In a few cases, there is a stalk-like dot in the centre of the top of the helmet, which connects the helmet to the plume.

4. Some specimens have ‘missing waves’ in the left hand area of sea, along the edge and underneath the lighthouse.

5. Three varieties exist based on the length of the plume.

a) Where the plume is longer and touches Britannia’s shoulder, the folds of the gown under the right arm are sharply engraved.

On some coins there is a narrow gap between the plume and the shoulder and the folds of the gown under the right arm are again sharply engraved.

c) A third type has a wide gap between the end of the plume and the shoulder with the folds of the gown lightly engraved.

6. Later specimens appear to have round punctuation marks on the obverse, whereas these are generally oval on earlier strikes.

7. Double striking of various date numerals also occurs.

I don't know how or if these combine together on individual specimens.

Real anorak stuff I know, but for enthusiasts..........

DaveG38

Edited January 27, 2009 by DaveG38

[scott]

great... makes me want to sort through them all checking. i'll try and show my minting error one.

[Phil Williams]

Hi Everybody. I’m not a coin collector and only joined you all here after reading these postings about the 1967 pennies. Around May/June we will be publishing our history of our local Market and thought it may be a good idea to give a penny away with every copy (about 500) – perhaps with something to say what could have been bought for 1d at various points in time. So, if anyone is willing to unload their coins on us I’m sure we could put them to good use. If anyone is in the Greater Manchester area we could arrange a pick up. From elsewhere, lets see what delivery charges would be. I add again, that they WILL be given away FREE. You can read about who we are when you Click here! or email direct Click here!