Question:
Thanks very much! You helped a lot. And very quickly too. The mint website shows that in 1992, they only minted 8000 $1 coins. If this is correct, wouldn't this make it very valuable? Eispecially as it was circulated. And what is the chance of finding one from monetary transactions? Thanks again for the help and info!
Answer:
Hi, You should pick up a copy of Australian Coins and Banknotes by Greg McDonald currently in it's 16th edition. It's a pocket guide you can carry around and has tonnes of useful information about mintages and issues. It is just a guide and prices in there do differ from what actually goes on in the real world.The dollar you speak of is the barcelona dollar (although that mintage is incorrect). We call that one a NCLT, non-circulating legal tender. It is the same size, shape, weight and composition of a regular dollar but it is a coin not intended to enter circulation.
However........you do sometimes see them in your change. It is quite rare though. A popular past time for some collectors is to go to the Casino or Clubs but not to gamble. Putting notes into the machines and then collecting the dollars out of the hopper, then checking them and feeding them back into the hopper to go again. Also going to the bank and withdrawing coins to browse through at home to check for all sorts of varieties or oddities. Back to the Casino, lots of people will pull NCLT coins from their packaging and spend them for a dollar (maybe stolen or they have a gambling problem) or spend coins from a money box that has been sitting for years. Just recently I picked up a Florey C mintmark dollar out of a poker machine (a NCLT coin). Although circulated it will fetch more than face value. So if you picked up a circulated barcelona dollar in your change if you put it up on ebay you might get $10 maybe more for it. The fact that it has been in circulation will lower the grade and the price that it's worth.
With regards to your collecting, I have found over the years that as I have learned more, my ideas have changed and my collecting habits have changed. Expect an evolution of your collection over time.
Regards,
The Australian-threepence.com blog team
Please note that in the interest of anonymity we always remove names so that we can share our questions and answers with everyone.
Posted by harrisk at August 7, 2009 12:15 PM
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