Australian And New Zealand Coins, How Far Back Can We Go - First Edition

Thanks Steve, that helps greatly.

Strange thing is my coin is larger than 22mm, so they must have issued several sizes of it. Maybe it was a token you used to get up to the 48th floor observatory?

1967 was the year Decimal currency was introduced in New Zealand on July 10th, a full 17 months after Australia. As a result some 256 million coins were pressed into circulation along with nearly 100 million banknotes!

The coins issued also included a large dollar coin as a commemorative.


Some 500k of these were released, 200k in cases like this, 250k more in uncirculated sets and 50k of them polished. They were not meant for circulation being sold at $3 each. Today you can not give them away as every man and his dog bought them and the sets.


Here is a set of 1967 Uncirculated coins, I have multiples of these and almost without exception are loose as the Pliofilm packaging of them was beyond dreadful and have corroded.
The eagle eyed of you may notice the 1 cent is from a polished set.


Reverse showing the Machin portrait of the Queen and the relative size of the coins next to each other. The 50 cent has a edge with 5 sections each of plain and reeded milling to separate it from the 20 cents.



This pretty bad photo from years ago shows a typical packet, this is the polished set and as you can see it is awful!

The sets were sent in the cardboard cases I showed yesterday, but some did come in vinyl wallets and I have seen one upright with the coins on a horrible pressed vinyl packet with an opened top for each coin, so if you tip it upside down, outcomes the coin.

Before you all assume I keep my set coins in bags and buckets, I have 3 sets of them behind high quality Mylar flips, preserved for posterity!



2,000 Posts - Yee haa!

My Australia for 1967 is nowhere near as exciting, apart from the 50 cent which suddenly became unaffordable as silver prices shot up that year, all the coins were issued and numbers were plentiful - not on the level of 1966 but not like NZ or Britain either which issued no coins for circulation at all in the 2nd years of their decimal currency (1968 and 1972).

Needless to say, any 1967 dated coins still in circulation in Australia are likely to be in that worn F - VF range after 53/54 years!


Here I have chosen to show another worn 20 cent piece and a better 1 cent and a very nice 5 cents (I struck paydirt with my Aussie 5 cent pieces!)



Events in New Zealand seemed to miss Australia - but they did send some 6 million old pennies to NZ between Sep 1966 and Mar 1967 to alleviate a penny shortage here and then they brought all our scrap cupronickel Halfcrowns and other predecimal coins as well!

Australia was also considering issuing a silver one dollar coin and there were proofs of it issued dated 1967. It showed a swan and is very rare around $1000 an example. This was into response of a silver 50 cent coin now having 70 cents of silver in it, even though silver prices dropped back in 1968 - they knew the future was in base metals.

Nice coins and notes PrinceTane.

Congrats on your 2000th post.
I've been here for nearly 15 years
and I only have 2700 posts. :)

Steve :)

1966

First year of Aussie decimal coins.

Here's a couple of copper coins followed by the round 50c.




Steve :)

Australia in 1966 had a big year with decimal currency being phased in. The task of minting 1.05 billion coins (Figure has been rounded as most denominations had coins minted in Canberra, Perth, Melbourne and London varieties), had taken since mid 1964.

Decimal Day was February 14th and the coins were all released in circulation. The sets consisted of a Bronze 1c and 2c, a cupro nickel 5c, 10c and 20c and a 80% silver 50 cent piece.

All the designs were by Stuart Devlin and showed Australian wildlife. The 5c - 50c are all still used today and the Machin portrait of the Queen appeared on the back.




1c, 2c, 5c and 20c (The lower 3 coins are nice, probably from a mint set, the 20c is my usual worn one)



Silver 50 cent coin - 2 coins here so I can show front and back, the design is the same to 1969 and later coins.





The 10 cents, here I have the two types as shown, none are rare but it is interesting. Differences between the mints on the 1c, 2c and 5c are often visible by claws and feathers on some of the animals. I haven't done too much analysis here and many of my 1966 coins are very worn - so its hard.




Coin obverses and showing relative size.


Sets saw much lower mintages than for New Zealand! Just 105k in total of Uncirculated sets were minted in various permutations including red and blue wallets, display cards and special wallets as presentation pieces to dignataries and the very scarce "Operation Fastbuck" wallets which were handed out to the lorry drivers moving the billon coins and notes around Australia in time for release. I dont have any to show sorry. Locally made sets came out too, one of the most bizarre I have seen is the coins mounted inside a plastic boomerang!

Only 18k Proof sets were issued and many have toned coins. All of these sets are scarce to rare unlike New Zealand's 1965 and 1967 sets which are real common. There was also 43k of a card containing a 1c and 2c coin, McDonald (2009) mentions that these were sold at the Canberra, Melbourne and Perth mints to schoolchildren for 5c and many actually opened the cards and spent the coins, so survivors are rare!

There was no special one off Dollars or other coins either, the 50 cent silver was the big coin - yet with 36 million minted its hardly rare and you can pick them up in EF - MS condition for basically silver value + $2 at most.

Mintages of each coin are (Combined mints and rounded to nearest million).

1c - 412 million (Mostly Canberra and London, a few Melbourne)
2c - 428 million (As above) - Melbourne minted bronze only
5c - 75 million (Canberra and London)
10c - 41 million (As above)
20c - 58 million (Canberra and London, also rolls in London)
50c - 36 million (Canberra only and 18k proofs in sets)

The overall number was fairly low with just over 1 billion coins for 14 million people, while NZ had 256 million for 2.5 million. This was countered by very large mintages of all denominations but the 2c and 5c in 1967 and 1968 (52 million 10 cents in 1967 and 83 million 20c)

As we know, the 50 cents lasted the one year and even in 1969 with the new coin, just 14 million more were minted. the high number of 20c coins minted in the late 60s reflected this gap between 20c and $1 in the currency stakes.

No Australia for 1965 and we pick up the story in sterling times!

Thank you both!