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

Its acid free cardboard, that I was assured of and its only common circulation stuff. All my nice coins are in mylar flips and capsules.

David, all the Americans use those cardboard Dansco things for their pennies and nickels etc anyway.

Anyway Australia 2004. Plenty of coins issued in that year, just I don't have many of them





$1, $2 and 50 cents were issued that year and also some commem ones, but yet I have none at this stage, the $2 had a lower than usual mintage.

One nice thing here is the large head and small head 20 cents. The laser technology was being tried for die showing and the head was reporduced too large on the 20c and some set 50 cent coins. The small head coin is the usual one, but the large head is scarce - possibly 400k out of 71.6 million coins!

Big thanks to David Graham for providing me with this rarity!

I have a pretty good mix of 2003 dated Australian coins. A lot of commems that year! The 2000s saw an explosion of commem coins that circulated with standard design coins.

In 2003 we had a series celebrating Volunteers, just 2 years after the same thing was celebrated in the mega year of 2001 (Australia's Commonwealth centennial).




Here the volunteers occupy the 20c and 50c coins. No normal $1 coins had been issued since 2000 (This one is for suffrage) and there was no normal design 50 cent coins, just this and the Coronation 50th anniversary.



Detail of those coins, it is amazing how many faces they squeeze on to that 20 cent coin (And detailed, not like that stick figure thing that came years later).

The designs are pleasing too, Australia still got full suffrage 10 years after us

the $2 coin had a lowish mintage of just 13 million that year too.


Reverses of the coins, just 4 more years of this, then we are subjected to Maklouf for 14 years and then Machin (Be still my beating heart)

Princetane will hate this - Gollum 50 cents from the 2003 New Zealand 'Lord of the Rings' 50c set:

Thanks, I am learning so much more of you guys as well. I am reliant on Numista and a 2009 McDonalad catalogue for everything, so what you wrote Squaremealroundplate increased my knowledge.

Australian coins are so fascinating and like all coins, the more I learn, the more I want to know (And get more coins too).

NumisRob, not annoyed at coin at all (Although Gollum was scary - I remember Roger (American Dad) imitation - the precious, the precious and then "First of say it, don't spray it".

It was the marketing I had issues with, these coins were sold at a MASSIVE mark up to cash in on the LOTR movie and yes it enriched NZ, but many film extras were exploited and stamp/coin dealers gouged the market. I worked for a stamp dealer who told me to treble prices for LOTR stamps whenever an American cruise ship came in (He's dead now) and that greed has always put me off.

I am assuming your coin was either 1 of 6 in the "Scenes in silver series" or one of 24 in the characters set (Gollum was very much part of Return of the King). We visited the Weta workshops - but that is as far as my interest goes.

Anyway keep that coin, as it will probably go up more in value (The set of 24 costs $3250).

I agree, I have most of the special 20 cent coins, but not much else.

Now 2002 - New Zealand, all of the coins were issued for circulation. However I made a mistake and took the $1 picture with the 2001 set, so you will see it tomorrow



Tails of the 2002 coins


Heads of the coins.

Of all these coins, only the $1 and $2 still circulates. It's my first year to show all the obselete coins together.

The 5c to 50c are all basically AU to UNC and look nice, all have lustre as they circulated only 4 years at most. The numbers minted were fairly low (10 million of 5c and 10c) and 7 million 20 cent coins (1st mintage since 1990!) and 3 million 50 cents.

The mintage of $1 and $2 was also generous.

Overall, 2002 was the best year for circulation coins since 1988 for our coinage, every year since then had one or more coins not present and some years like 1992, 1993 had nothing issued for circulation!

2002 Australian Outback 50 cents and standard 20 cents:

Nice, I think that's all of them. I have 7 of them and just 1 of the 50c and the $1. But first NZ in 2001. Today's shot shows the 2002 dollar coin by mistake.

There was in fact a $2 coin issued in 2001, but not a $1 coin.



Tails showing the 2002 $1 coin


Heads, sadly I did the cross outs before I realised I had not put that dollar coin in the 2002 pile.

2001 was an interesting year with the first 50 cent coin issued for circulation since 1988 being released (A 13 year gap is the record for any NZ denomination - the 20c is 12 years and 8 for Halfcrowns and Florins).

Yesterday you saw the 2002 20 cent coin, now you will not see any more circulation 20c or 50c coins until we reach 1990! and 1988!

Again the silver coins have almost no wear, but the gold is nearly worn flat after almost 20 years of continual use.

You may also notice the year 2001 has quite round figures different from the more serifed ones you see in similar years. By now, all of the circulation coins were being made at The Royal Mint in Wales, occasionally another Royal Mint in new south WALES would help out

PS Americans - I know you are wondering where the 9/11 references are, as tragic as it was, 9/11 did not mean as much to us as it did to you (I still remember saturation coverage of it TV for days).