We enter the last phase of shiny silver coins!
Numbers of silver halfcrowns issued remained high in the War years thanks to a massive silver loan from the USA under the lend lease programme and the coins of this era are beautiful and abundant, thanks to hoarding before the changeover to Cupro nickel in 1947.
The 1941 and 1942 coins are basically UNC, There is the lighest rubbing on George's head on 1941 and in 1942 I can't see any wear at all, just an incredibly shiny coin. At $20 a pop the 1939 - 1942 and 1945/46 coins were a great addition to my collection!
1943 and 1944 look really nice too, but these are high VF/ near EF coins I got really cheap off a good dealer who also sold me a lot of my earlies. They were $12 each and have good natural wear. The difference between these and the AU/UNC ones are pretty obvious. Still these coins would light up anyone's collection and much better than the usual Fine coin you get from this era.
The 1945 coin I bought after the other shiners and this featured in a post on the acquisitions thread back in June, one person criticised it for its bag marks and you all sprang to my defense as I remember. Despite those marks its UNC too.
The final silver 1946 is like the 1919 a supreme example to end the silver age on, although in this case the base silver age.
In 1946 the Americans called in their silver loan and wanted it back, so the British empire called in the silver coins, melted them down and sent it back to the UK. Despite the hoarding many places complied. UK, NZ, Mauritius, Ireland, Seychelles and Fiji all switched to Base metal overnight, and I can't speak for the others, but NZD recalled a lot of silver coins, minted a mountain of cupronickel ones and sent the silver back to the UK.
Australia did not, but in 1946 switched to half from full silver (Possibly as they had their own arrangements).
South Africa and Canada pretty much carried on with silver coins , the former moving to half silver in 1951 and the latter remaining at 80% until 1967/68.
Starting in 1947 dated coins, previous silver denominations were now Cupro nickel, an alloy of 25% nickel and 75% copper. These coins are not biscuited as a friend sent me a 1947 halfcrown sawn into 3 pieces for nothing and the coin is the same colour throughout!
Yet again these coins weighed the same, and were the same diameter as the silver pieces except the edges were more finely milled. When new they looked a lot like the silver ones too but degraded to a either dark black, greyish or even greenish tinge. Most cupronickel coins are at least Fine and usually VG at the worst, so we don't know what really worn ones look like.
After the Blab, my 1947 and 1948 coins are both VF and VF+ yet look out of place next to their older and shinier friends!
1947 saw a high mintage, but some 71 million half crowns were minted in 1948, which was the highest mintage ever for any halfcrown, even the last year of 1967 was only 33 million.
The only reason I can suggest for this, was a huge move to replace all the silver ones still in circulation!
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Posted 10/07/2020 11:15 am
The last 4 halfcrowns of George V are all in that Fine to near VF grade and the 1933 is Fine, 1934 which is another scarce year is good Fine, 1935 which is a bit more common (Numbers stayed under 10 million between 1934 and 1938) is probably the joker at barely fine, then a gFine 1936 which could be better as 1936 the year of 3 coins, mintages of all coins was high.
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