1943 Australian Penny

Nice example.

Just some background story that may be of interest to you.

In 1943, Australia was fully on a war footing. The combination of wartime hoarding of cash plus the influx of tens of thousands of well-paid US servicemen based here - who needed to be paid in the local currency because Military Payment Certificates hadn't been invented yet - meant that we needed more coins than the two local Mints were capable of producing.

Ordinarily, if we had a coin shortage, we would have had the main mint in London make the surplus coinage for us. But Britain was under Nazi submarine blockade and had their own problems with the war and with their own US troop contingent to help pay for, so was in no position to help. So instead we turned to the Indian mints to help supply copper coins; the US itself helped with the minting of silver coins, which is why you can find silver Australian coins from this time period with "S" and "D" mintmarks.

The Indian-made coins, besides having the "I" mintmark, look distinctly different to the Australian-made coins. The two dots on either side of the word "PENNY" stand out, especially when one gets used to looking at the word "PENNY" for the Perth mintmark, but the overall impression is usually a much stronger and more detailed strike.

Interesting indeed! Thank you for sharing.