$2 Coin Struck On Foreign Holed Planchet Or Washer

Thanks for sharing.
Is that one yours?

My money would be on washer. A spectacular error. How did you come across that one?

Wow, that is an amazing error. Did the owner tell you how they came across it - was it from circulation?

Very nice error ! I'm guessing that these questions would have been research but I'm going ask them anyway,is there a country/ies in the world that still use steel in coins ? & if so do any have that specific weight for their coins ?
I'm going to get my world coin books out & go through page by page & see what I can find,again probably already been done but gives me something to do anyway.

I do not know of ANY standard planchet of near approximation to the Aussie $2 planchet from any other country, that has a hole.

Therefore,

The 'planchet' for this coin is most probably a washer. I have never seen a brass washer of this thickness and diameter. The colour of the pictures indecisive, the 'washer' could be brass plated. It is reported as being magnetic.
I wonder what is the thickness of this 'coin' is ?

or,

It could bean illegal 'mint sport', where a standard planchet was holed, and fed into the press, and this is the result. With the rate that a modern mint press can operate, this little guy would have been very hard to recover it it had been buried. In this case it must have missed a weighing test later on. Normally it would have been removed with the low weight bitten edge errors. If it has come from the MInt, the hole would have been punched, not drilled.

or,

I still can't get my mind away from it being a 'shed job', however. In this case, the hole may well have been punched out in a powerful press, rather than having being drilled out.
I wonder if there are any signs of drilling score marks inside the hole. The pictures conveniently hide this. There is considerable edge flattening on the obverse rim, which means some force has been sustained as the result of drilling or hole punching.

My scepticism remains.

The Royal Mint are making brass,copper & nickel plated steel planchets for many countries these days,the questions are do they make them for any countries that have a hole in the middle ? & were they making them back in the early 90's ?
If it is nickel plated steel ( which by the colour of the reverse moreso than the obverse ) would the strike pressure we use for the $2 be much higher than the planchets are designed for & thus the strike has partially broken through the nickel plating,which may explain the patchy colouring on the obverse.
Of course all of this is just a theory,i could'nt find any world coins in my books that match in size or weight but that does'nt mean the above theory is'nt possible.

http://www.royalmint.com/business/c...-coin/armour

Sitting next to TPP over the last few days while she was writing this article and having seen the amount of research she's done into the error the only thing that can be said for certain is that no-one is certain what the $2 was struck on :)

PP, do you have any more pictures of it, or can you get any more from the owner? Did you get to handle it personally?

I note that some of the rim appears to be missing, I guess to do with the strike pressure or perhaps a rounded edge of the original 'planchet'. If it's not a ‘real' coin planchet, would a higher strike pressure be needed to result in a sharper rim?

I'm a bit inclined to think it may have been a washer, but I suppose unless it can be established whether or not the manufacturer of Australian blanks also makes holed blanks for another Country the same size as is used for our $2 coin, we may never find out the real source of the original ‘blank' that it's struck on.

I do think it's 100% genuine, and in no way a case of PMD or shed job, sorry sel_691

Whichever it turns out to be, it's a great find for the owner, and thanks for showing it to us. Will there be another article about it in CAB?