1981 20c Varieties

It looks like the 4th claw is full length coinmantim,the photo just looks that way

Thanks for the information there appleangel07.

Is there any particular reason a lot of 1981 coins were minted in Canada and Wales?

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.

I have a theory that the massive production of 20c in 1981 is the reason that 1983 and 1984 coins were not needed and that's why they were melted down. Just my humble opinion.

I wrote the article in CAB so I thought I would upload some images that show the differences between the three 20c coins produced by the different mints in 1981.





You can see the shortened first claw on the Canada die and the weaker fourth claw on the Wales die.

The following images show the differences in the SD - the Canadian die has a much clearer strike than the others while the Wales die has the S and D wider apart.








The following images show the letters ELIZA for each die - the curves on the bases of some letters on the Canada die are easily seen.








During my research I obtained photographs from the Royal Canadian Mint and The Royal Mint of the speciment coins in their collections. The 20c from Canada clearly shows only 3 1/2 claws and I believe that ALL Canadian coins show this variation. The fact that very few can be found in UNC is a result of their having been placed directly into circulation.

Finally, here is an image of the die chip found on some Wales coins to the right of the 0.

Hope all this helps!

I have one of the dot above the 'R' variety. If I remember correctly, I paid just over a $100 for it about 2-3 years ago. No idea as to how many. Uncommon, perhaps rare.