Always fun to find on old coin.! Possibly brought to the U.S. by a returned serviceman who perhaps spent time in Australia on r&r. Kangaroos have been known to travel great distances.!
Posted 04/07/2015 8:57 pm
Helo and welcome. 
"Don't clean coins" doesn't really apply when it comes to coins dug up out of the ground, especially copper/bronze coins. Your coin was always going to show "environmental damage", no matter how carefully you cleaned it. It holds much more sentimental value to you, the finder, than it would to a collector.
Thanks to the combination of wartime hoarding and the huge influx of American troops who arrived on our shores from 1942, Australia had difficulty in producing enough coinage to meet demand, even wth both mints (melbourne and Perth) operating at full capacity. So the mint in Bombay, India was contracted to supply additional coin (shipping coins from the London mint was considered too vulnerable to u-boat attack), giving a total of three mints for 1943 coins.
Most Australian coins don't have easily translatable mintmarks like American coins do. For 1943 pennies, Melbourne mint has no mintmark; Perth Mint coins have a single dot after the word "PENNY"; Bombay coins have a dot both before and after PENNY as well as a small "I" below the portrait. Your coin has one dot and no I, so it is Perth Mint. Here's the NGC catalogue page for it.
"Don't clean coins" doesn't really apply when it comes to coins dug up out of the ground, especially copper/bronze coins. Your coin was always going to show "environmental damage", no matter how carefully you cleaned it. It holds much more sentimental value to you, the finder, than it would to a collector.
Thanks to the combination of wartime hoarding and the huge influx of American troops who arrived on our shores from 1942, Australia had difficulty in producing enough coinage to meet demand, even wth both mints (melbourne and Perth) operating at full capacity. So the mint in Bombay, India was contracted to supply additional coin (shipping coins from the London mint was considered too vulnerable to u-boat attack), giving a total of three mints for 1943 coins.
Most Australian coins don't have easily translatable mintmarks like American coins do. For 1943 pennies, Melbourne mint has no mintmark; Perth Mint coins have a single dot after the word "PENNY"; Bombay coins have a dot both before and after PENNY as well as a small "I" below the portrait. Your coin has one dot and no I, so it is Perth Mint. Here's the NGC catalogue page for it.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
