What Constitutes A Complete Set Of Circulating 20c Coins?

To the forum.

Try to get a copy of MacDonald's, it doesn't have to be the latest edition.
You will find all the mintage figures and which coins are mint set only in there.

With regards to the 10c pieces - I've found both in change. I think I've seen two or three of the 1985 but I don't remember how many 1997 (probably more - the 1985 was the hardest). I don't look through large numbers of 10c pieces though.

I've never seen a 1983, 1984, 1985 or 1988 20c in change. I think rolls are reported for 1983 and 1984, and I recall seeing a 1988 roll in a Downies auction a few years ago (I don't recall the details though). Someone has said they've found more wavy 1966 20c pieces than 1985 20c pieces so I'm inclined to think they are mint set only at that rarity. It's also possible that the reported 1985 mintage was 1984 dated coins.
Also worth noting is that the 1988 20c was considered a mint set only coin until fairly recently though I'm not sure what prompted the change.

Did you request a copy of this unpublished report? That would be interesting I think.

Thanks for your advice. I get all my mintage figures directly from the RAM website, including their annual reports, because I believe that first-hand sources are more accurate than second-hand ones. Although I'm sure MacDonald's is good, they're ultimately just repeating the figures provided by RAM.




I'm well aware of this problem, but I'm hoping it won't make too much difference to the actual result. If it does, then we'll just have to account for this as well.




I guess there's always going to be a bit of ambiguity here, but I would expect at least several hundred, if not several thousand, examples to be released into circulation before I consider it to be a truly circulating coin.

Anything less than that, and it seems doubtful (but not impossible) that the mint was involved. Anything more than that, and we should be able to detect the presence of these coins using the above method.

Regardless of how many 20c coins dated 1983-1988 were released into circulation, they must eventually be found by someone, and the number of such people on coin forums such as this ought to give us an indication of where the coins came from.

Assuming that all the 20c coins dated 1983-1988 found in circulation came from mint sets, does the attrition rate for any of these particular mint sets seem excessively large? I could understand 1% ending up in circulation, but not 10%.




I have no doubt the 1985 and 1997 10c coins are out there, but they're still incredibly difficult for me to find. I reckon they dumped all the 1997 10c coins in Perth, in order to keep them as far away from the east coast as possible.

Nevertheless, I've found plenty of 1991 10c coins, which is odd considering that they had a lower mintage than the 1997 ones. I've seen so many now that I keep forgetting to collect them, having decided long ago that they were common.

As a result, I doubt the mintage of the 1997 10c coin was anywhere near as high as the mint says it is, although I still believe it's higher than the 1985 one.




I don't think the lack of a mint roll proves 20c coins weren't minted for circulation in 1985, because there was a person selling a collection of mint rolls of 10c coins on ebay last week, and one of the only years he was missing was 1985. However, you and many others have found 10c coins dated 1985 in your change, so the lack of a mint roll for 1985 doesn't prove anything.

Considering that all the other denominations besides 5c were minted for circulation in 1985, and that they all bore the date 1985, I have no reason to doubt that this was also the case for the 20c, and that all the 1985 20c coins minted for circulation were melted down with the ones from 1983 and 1984.

The decision to halt the production of circulating coinage seems to have occurred halfway through 1985, and several million 20c coins dated 1985 could have been easily minted before then. These would have been held in storage for a number of years, before they were eventually destroyed.




This is very interesting, because it implies that insufficient numbers of 1988 20c coins have been found in circulation to consider it to be a circulating coin. I have no idea where the mint got its figure of 200,000 coins from, but it looks suspiciously small.

Even if the mint had wanted to release some 20c coins in 1988, it would have made better sense to use those dated 1983, 1984 and 1985, which would have still been sitting in their warehouses, waiting to be either used or destroyed.

Can you prove that a mint roll of 1988 20c coins actually exists, or are you confusing this with the 10c coin? Does anyone have any idea what else the 1988 mintage of 200,000 20c coins could have consisted of? Could the mint be confusing them with NCLT, like they did with the 1992 Mob of Roos $1 coin?




I did request a copy of this report, but they refused to give it to me because it was only a draft, and not yet ready for public release. I expected them to publish it on their website, but I'm sure that if they had, you would have seen it by now. I'm planning to follow up with them to see what happened to it, but it all depends on how busy I am.

Hello Hercules and others

I can confidently tell you, with 100% certainty,and after over 40 years experience, that there weren't any 20c coins issued into general circulation by the RAM from 1983 to 1993 and 1995 - that's 12 years. The RAM's coin mintage figures are, at best, disappointingly unreliable. Check their mintage figure for the 1992 Barcelona $1 : from memory I think it states a 1992 Mob of Roos, and in some instances the RAM's mintage figures for some denominations even state there weren't any minted at all eg, 1995 Platypus 20c ?. Terrible.

The only way you can get any of the above 20c, as you probably realise, is from mint sets. Just be careful with the 1985 20c, many of which have a useless grey toning, and the 1993 20c which are extremely difficult to get in true Gem condition because many of them in the 1993 mint sets can have a few very fine scratches on the obverse.

Hope this is of some help.

Hello Hecules

If you Google RAM.gov.au, click on to the top for " design and products ", you'll find on the left panel the range of Australian coins. Click on to eg. 20c, and the ( ad hoc )mintage figures for 20c will come up.

As for finding coins that were never released into circulation by the RAM, Crown casino has given me, and others, quite a few never released coins, and older scarce banknotes in change over the years. a 2001 Navy $1, Olympic $'s, many unreleased 20c and 50c coins, a brand new 2001 Federation $5 etc. These coins and banknotes once belonged to collectors who had their houses burgled and the thieves took the coins and banknotes to the casino.

The RAM website mintage figure only became reliable and some what coherent in the last 10 years or so. Before this time, the RAM's mintage figures, and coins actually minted especially from 1983 to 1995, was very unreliable....a good example of the bureaucratic " best practices " syndrome. Mintage figures for eg. 2014 are only up to the end of June 2014 which is the RAM's cut off for production figures, although 2014 coins continued to be produced past June 2014. The final coin production figures for 2014 won't be available until after the RAM's 2017 annual report is tabled towards the end of 2017.