1945 Penny - No Dot? Filled Die Or ......

Needs further investigation. Better pics would help, preferably without the "Fish Eye" effect which is distorting things. I would need to see this in the hand but looks like a fake to me. The distance between IMP and the base of the neck is too great. The line of the base of the neck is straight instead of being a slight upsweep at the front. The point of the front of the neck is too high. It should be at least a quarter of the way down of the G. Very interesting though

Hi Airgem, I really appreciate your thoughts. Looking at the coin in hand my instincts tell me this is a genuine coin, I have no such confidence that it hasn't been manipulated since then though.
The faint imprint of the king's neck can be seen in the correct position below and to the right of the very thin neck showing on the effigy. I think the distances of this faint imprint from the legends are within normal range, or extremely close anyway.

The coin is too worn to be of value, I would simply like to understand what happened and why. Someone has spent time and effort to create this silly thing - I just wonder why. LOL

Thanks for your help.
I will try and get better pics.

Still just trying to find any plausible reason why this distorted mess could have occurred legitimately. All of my attempts to do this are merely intellectualising and surmise because I have next to no knowledge of the processes involved. So forgive me if I say something stoopid in my musings.

This is from an article by Andrew Crellin of Sterling and Currency who worked at the mint and so has some first hand knowledge. My question is could this penny be from the aborted attempt to use the 1937/38 master dies?

"The 1945 Melbourne penny never actually made it into production - the plan was that all pennies for 1945 were to be struck at the Perth Mint using dies supplied by the Melbourne Mint. When Melbourne Mint staff went to strike the dies for the Perth Mint using the original master tools from 1937, they found that they were worn beyond repair. The Melbourne Mint staff then undertook to produce new master tools, and the four 1945 Melbourne pattern pennies held by the Melbourne Mint (and then the MOV) were struck during this process. - See more at:" http://www.sterlingcurrency.com.au/...EGL45b6.dpuf

That obverse pic is poor, hopefully this is slightly better.

"Too many alarms bells ringing here."

No cause for alarm airgem.

I'm going to go out on a limb here. No offence intended but I will be very happy if none is taken.

There seems to be a culture of :

"Let's put this to bed as soon as possible" [which is fairly understandable]

"If there is one suspicious or unexplained aspect - throw out the lot, bath, baby and all."

"In the event of ambiguity or insufficient information let's assume deviousness and or stupidity first"

Assumption that the asker is only interested for the purposes of turning the subject matter into cash."


This doesn't create a learning environment. imo

Hi Basil, thanks for your thoughts which I agree with to some extent.

I wonder though if this 'prevailing attitude' amongst coinies is the reason for "Coin collecting has been static for a long time"

I'm a relatively new enthusiast who has been disillusioned to the point of 'walking away' on half a dozen occasions due to the astounding negativity of highly respected identities within the coin community. I've only met one experienced person whom I wouldn't describe as jaded and at least non enthusiastic if not downright pessimistic and negative.

Just my humble perspective and no offence intended, darge.

G'day darge, I don't post here often, my first for a long time. Only just recently read about a variety where the 4 and 5 are further appart, and the coin you posted is one of those. I recently looked at 58 pennies dated 1945 that a dealer had, and the wider spaced 4 and 5 occured approx. 1 in 8. Not a huge sample by any means but I'm thinking the wider spaced numerals are the scarcer variety. It takes a while to train your eye, but appart from the wider spacing, the loop on the 5 is finer particularly towards the tail. The loop also has an appearance of slightly distorting to the right. Hope this helps.