It’s the dream of every Australian coin noodler to find that one coin that makes all the time, effort, and dirty hands worthwhile. One of the most commonly hunted denominations is the humble dollar coin. So what should you, the dedicated coin hunter, know what Australian Dollar Coins to keep your eye out for? This article will cover the top 4 Australian dollar coins that are worth money.
Year 2000 $1/10c Mule Found while Noodling
1. Mules
Mules are coins that are struck by coin dies that were not intended to be used together. There’s at least three mules in the Australian dollar coin series that are worth good money. The first is the legendary Year 2000 $1/10c Mule which if found in your change today (March 2021) would be worth a few hundred dollars. The other two mules to watch out for are the extremely rare 2014 and 2015 ANZAC $1 / 10c mules. Both of these were accidentally struck with ten cent heads dies, just a handful of each has been found and they could be worth thousands of dollars if you’re lucky enough to find one.
2. 1992 Mob of Roos Dollar Coin
The 1992 Mob of Roos dollar coin is the stuff of legends. For years the Royal Australian Mint website suggested that several thousand were minted but in reality almost none were or they were all destroyed. In all our years of tracking the error coin market we only know of two or three that have been sold, and those in the high thousands of dollars. So what’s the moral here? If you’re looking at dollar coins and you see one dated 1992 make sure you flip it over and check out the reverse design to see if you’ve got a coin worth real money!
Australia 1 Dollar 1984 Wrong Planchet Error
3. Dollar Coins Struck on Wrong Planchets
Those of you with even the most basic knowledge of coins will know that coins are struck on metal discs called blanks or planchets. Obviously it’s in the best interest of any coin mint that they be struck on the CORRECT blanks or planchets. However, sometimes they are not, resulting in what is known as a wrong planchet error. There have been several instances of this happening in the dollar coin series and each is worth a good chunk of change. A couple of key examples to look out for are the 1984 Dollar struck on a Ten Cent planchet and the 2009 Australian Mob of Roos Dollar Struck on Bi-Metal Planchet.
Australia 2001 Upset Centenary of Federation 1 Dollar Coin
4. 2001 Centenary of Federation Upset Dollar Coins
Make sure that you check each and every 2001 Centenary of Federation $1 coin to make sure the head and tails side are the same way up! For some reason during the production process of these coins the obverse (heads) die of one pair of dies became loose and a number (many thousands) were struck with the head/tails dies not correctly oriented. These are known as upset coin errors. These errors are not hugely valuable, but if you were to find one it would probably buy you a nice snitty at the local pub. Certainly worth enough to not want to throw back into circulation!
NOTE: The values in this article were current and approximate at time of writing (March 2021). To get a better gauge of values of these Australian Dollar Coins try checking recent auction results on sites like eBay or sold results from major Australian coin auction houses.
