1943 I Penny Broadstruck Error

US grading is much more lenient than Australian standards mmmprgan. I stand by the grade of VF maybe gVF. Thats not to say it isn't a nice error coin obviously worth more than a standard coin.

I am going to buck the trend here and suggest that your coin could be better than VF bit it's pretty much impossible to grade accurately from your image. Generally wear on those coins would show as discolouration in most images and I see very little of it on your coin. There's certainly very little colour break in the hair above the ear and the top of the ear is still all there. The same is true of the kings's hair (it's pretty much all there) and there's very little scuffing visible on the high points of the roo.

If we're grading to the ANDA standard then a VF coin will show "flat spots on the high points of the design" where as an EF coin "light wear is apparent on the high points of the design on both sides" and "lustre may still be present but if so then only in the legend around the rim". To my eyes, at least based on the image supplied the coin tends more to an EF grade with a spot or two rather than a VF coin. An Australian EF grade is also more consistent with the OP's US grade of AU.

I find with the KGVI portrait its very hard to tell from photographs the degree of wear to the 'side burns'? to the left of the ear. When I grade these I look for that area and the detail to be only a little worn. To make EF its needs to have very little to no wear around there. The best way to tell is in hand where it can be tilted so the light can make shadows around that area.

Markn youre very good a photography of coins so do you find these the hardest obverse of Aussie coins to accurately capture? I cant get them looking nice for the life of me.

There is a very useful book called "The Standard Guide to Grading British Coins" by Derek Francis Allen & published by Rotographic which publishes a number of other books to do with British coins. I ordered my copy through AbeBooks & the best price about a year ago was US$ 16.74 with free shipping from The Book Depository (Guernsey, GY, United Kingdom).

This book contains pictures of every encountered grade of all obverses & reverses of every British pre-decimal coin from 1797 to 1970. Although I have an interest in British coins & a fair representation of examples, they are not my main collecting focus. However, because we used the same T.H Paget portrait of George VI & Mary Gillick portrait of Elizabeth II on our pre-decimal coins, as well as being useful for my British coins, this book is directly relevant to the grading of equivalent Australian coins. This is especially so because the ANDA pamphlet, while an excellent description of grading, only uses George V examples.

As a review, attached are the scans for obverses of George VI to give you a taste of what is on offer & which are immediately pertinent to the current discussion.


AU (about uncirculated) with bag abrasions


EF (extremely fine) discolouration showing location of early wear


EF (extremely fine)
All of the fine hairlines running from top to bottom of the portrait should be visible. The first place for the coin to wear tends to be the eyebrow.


VF (very fine)
Many of the less pronounced hairlines will have disappeared, although those above the parting should still be visible, as well as coarse lines running from left to right above the ear.


F (fine)
Signs of substantial wear on side of face, although the coarse hairlines above remain just visible.


Fair (equivalent to our rather misleading VG -- very good)
Little detail still visible, even the ear is becoming less defined. Few coins wore more than that depicted here.

A British book using British standards cannot be used to arrive at a grade using the ANDA standard any more than than the Sheldon scale can. Still and interesting book and one I'll look to purchase.

You can't use British standards to arrive at a an ANDA grade. Period. British standards are generally TOUGHER than Australian standards in a similar manner that Australian standards are tougher than US standards. There are dealers who spend a LOT of money in the the UK buying up Australian coins that are graded EF/AU to British standards which are easy UNC's here. I know this happens from first hand experience and because I've got a few coins in my own collection sourced from the UK. Futhermore, British standards allow for a coin to be graded EF based on weakness alone. Yes, a weakly struck coin that has never seen circulation can be graded EF.




Where's the allowance for strike weakness in there? There isn't any. And Indian struck coins are notoriously weakly struck. For goodness sake if you use that standard to grade some UNC 1964y pennies and half pennies they'd only be graded as VF because they had no hair detail even when struck!

That book looks interesting because though, because I've never seen creditable discussion on the wear pattern of George VI coins.

markn

Strike is something I neglected to consider which is quite amateur. Interesting to hear that the british often dont recognise strike when grading.

Also not knowing too much about errors would a broad-strike reduce the strength of the strike as the metal has slightly more room to spread out?

Hi Sov,

No problem with grading your coins to a tougher (or even easier) standard. There seems to be a push on the forums here to grade to an ANDA standard and hence my reason for suggesting a British standard isn't relevant. A similar discussion was held a while back comparing the Sheldon scale (and how it is applied by PCGS in particular) and the ANDA grading standard.

I also love to go through dealers stock looking for the coin I want at the grade I am happy with rather than just accepting what is offered. It makes for a more interesting hobby but can make you very unpopular with dealers who do not like their stock picked through.

Mark