Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her 90th birthday on 21st April 2016 and Australia* will holiday for the occasion on June 13th. Our national public holiday marks the closing date to pre-order a commemorative 3 coin set released for the Queen’s birthday. The Royal Australian Mint is releasing this set on a made-to-order basis so a pre-order is a must.

The set features 3 coins, a 50 cent and two 20 cent pieces totalling face value of 90 cents! At first glance these coins look like standard designs you’d find in your change. They are, but with a bit of a twist. All three coins are dated 2016 but each depict the different portraits used on decimal currency in Australia for Her Majesty over the last 50 years**. The 20 cents each bear the Arnold Machin and Raphael Maklouf portaits, the Machin used 1966-1984 and the Maklouf used from 1985-1998. The dodecagonal 50 cent bears the current Ian Rank-Broadley obverse (note it’s standard and not commemorative for the 50th anniversary of decimal currency). Each coin has the standard reverse design of Stuart Devlin’s platypus and the Australian Coat of Arms.

The coins are struck in standard cupro-nickel and have a frosted uncirculated finish. Issue price for this set is $25. The mintage of these coins will be decided by collectors.

Additional information: 7/9/16 The closing date passed and the mintage of this 3 coin set was set at 9,108. Each set is individually numbered. In true RAM style it’s come to light that pre-ordering these sets is not the only way to secure these coins with new Australia Post PNC’s available for each of the 3 coins. 1966 Machin PNC, 1985 Maklouf PNC and 1998 Rank-Broadley PNC’s are being sold by AP for $17.95 with a capped mintage of 9,000 PNC’s each.
3/11/16 Adding to this, yet another PNC, this time a prestige 3 coin PNC has also been issued by Australia post for $59.95 with a mintage of 1,926 produced.

*excluding WA & Qld
**excluding the one year Gottwald portait used in 2000

The Changeover Tour arrived in Adelaide! For ANZAC Day the Royal Australian Mint rolled into town with their little blue tent dwarfed by the sea of veterans, returned soldiers, military personnel and spectators out to commemorate ANZAC Day 2016. An early start the RAM tent opened at 7am and we were there early to see what was going on.

The early queues were quite short and by 9am we were been and gone so we can’t comment on the rest of the days activity. Visitors to the Mint tent could purchase a map counterstamped ANZAC dollar, various mint products or swap their cash for new 50th Anniversary of Decimal Currency commemorative coins and coloured $2. We didn’t see the mobile press in action so it’s fair to say it wasn’t popular at $10 for a dollar coin. The ANZAC Centenary coin program issues were keenly sought for the occasion. The coin swap was by far the winner of the day with only a limit on the 5 coin red $2 bags -1 per line-up. If you brought enough cash then you were able to swap Orange commemorative $2 5 coin bags, 2016 50 years of decimal currency 50c, 20c, 10c and 5c all for face value with no limitations except for what you could carry! Our RAM friends were cheery as usual for such an early start. The day continued until 2pm through all the ANZAC celebrations in the Torrens parade grounds and RSL headquarters in the heart of Adelaide.

Learn the Legend: Anzac to Afghanistan is the name of the series of coins being distributed by News Corp through local participating newsagents and newspaper outlets. The 14 coins minted by the Royal Australian Mint are available each day over a 2 week period with the first coin in a collector album being given away with the purchase of a newspaper. Each coin thereafter costs $3 per coin and collectors are keenly visiting their newsagent each day to pick up the new coin. Buy a newspaper and present the token inside to the newsagent to redeem the daily coin.

The first (and free) coin in the series is a 25 cent coin struck in nordic gold which is not a real gold coin but an alloy of aluminium zinc and bronze that’s gold in colour. Each weekend a 25 cent coin will be issued with 4 in the entire series. Weekdays collectors and keen enthusiasts will have the opportunity to purchase the 20 cent coins in the series totaling 10 coins. The complete set includes 14 coins and is similar to last years 100 years of ANZAC 20 cent collection.

Each coin has a different theme and is part of the ANZAC centenary commemorative issues and events happening throughout 2014 to 2018. Each coin honours great military moments in history and the designs are inspired by images from the Australian War Memorial, Gary Ramage -news photographer and The Australian Government Department of Defence. The coins are legal tender and have been minted by our circulating coin producer the Royal Australian Mint. They are intended though to be collector coins.

Our legends 25c
Fromelles 20c
Rats of Tobruk 20c
Darmin bombing 20c
Bomber command 20c
Thai-Burma railway 20c
Kokoda 25c
Battle of Long Tan 25c
Korean war 20c
Peacekeeping 20c
Special forces 20c
Dogs at war 20c
Afghanistan 20c
Peace 25c

This article appeared on our blog April 1st 2016 and is completely untrue. You can however find the initials of the designer Horst Hahne (HH) on every 1988 2 dollar coin. This coin has no value beyond it’s face value of $2.

Take a closer look at the 2 dollar coin in your pocket, purse or wallet, does it have a tiny HH on the torso of the Aboriginal in the picture? Have you found a $2 with a small HH stamped onto the coin and think it’s got to be worth a lot of money? Have you found a rare coin?

You sure have, and they are rare and worth a tidy sum!

Now there’s no need to jump on Facebook to ask about the HH, and now you’re here there’s no need to ask Google- here’s the answer.

Back in 1988 when the first $2 coins appeared, a local entrepreneur sought to mark the transition from a 2 dollar note to a 2 dollar coin by adding his mark to the coins. Horatio Hornblower, of H & H Engineering Co counterstamped the new coins as they came though his factory out the back of Bourke in northern New South Wales. It’s not known how many of the 160,852,000 new coins have the added mintmark but if you find one you have a very rare piece indeed. In 2016, some 28 years later these coins are still found in your change and it’s important to look out for this counterstamp.

This article appeared on our blog April 1st 2016 and is completely untrue. You can however find the initials of the designer Horst Hahne (HH) on every 1988 2 dollar coin. This coin has no value beyond it’s face value of $2.

Saturday the 13th February 2016 the Canberra Mint held an open day to celebrate 50 years of decimal currency. Our friends at Drake Sterling Numismatics attended the celebrations and were kind enough to write us a report on the event.

It was on a sunny Saturday that we made the trek down to the nation’s capital to celebrate the 50th anniversary of decimal currency at our national mint. The drive was a long one, and we arrived an hour late after we missed the turnoff. However, after wending about the new Parliament House and passing the Prime Minister’s gated digs, we finally arrived. And what a sight we saw.

There were balloons, a jumping castle, streamers and flags, coloured tents, mint staff dressed as coins, a sausage sizzle and a fairy floss machine, a rock band, a mini-coin show, and face painting. And there were so many people. It felt like the entire collecting fraternity and their kids had turned up in Canberra for the day.

The biggest attraction of the day, of course, was the special open day fifty cent issue. Although the coin itself was identical to the standard issue gold-plated round fifty cent, it came in specially branded packaging—and if you were lucky, you could have it signed by the current mint master Ross MacDiarmid. I was after a handful to have graded by PCGS, but the queue to buy them was so long and winding that it took five or six minutes to find the end of the line. A collector friend who had arrived earlier said that the line was a hundred metres long at eight AM in the morning, and that keen collectors had joined the line as early as five AM. Fortunately, there was a shorter queue for cash purchases, and after I collected my coins and handed over the cash, we went inside to join the factory floor tour.

It was the first time that I’d been on the factory floor. There was much to see, including the actual striking of circulation coins by the presses. Dotted about the factory floor were large, garbage bin-sized cans—each literally filled to the brim with gleaming, mint state coins. All bore the new 2016 50th anniversary obverse. The following room had a display of blanks at various stages of production. Beneath a glass display, staff had set out a row of blanks and planchets of each of our current coinage. There was also a display of blanks and planchets from our non-circulating legal tender. A pickled silver planchet was also on display: The pickled planchet looked like a white, plaster disk. Next up was a small room of staff putting together mint and proof sets. One or two women were assembling the boxes, while another small team were snapping coins into capsules. The last room was the proof coin room, where proof coins were hand-struck by white-coated staff. After striking, staff assessed the proof coin with a magnifying glass for faults or other issues. Even dust particles would be cause for the coin to be rejected. And indeed, many coins were rejected: There was a pile of discarded proof coins on each staff member’s desk. A nearby tour guide mentioned that usually there were only very few rejects, and that the high rejection rate that day was due to the number of tourists on the floor disturbing the minting process.

While most collectors were interested in buying new mint product from the mint shop, I was interested in visiting the National Coin Collection, which was on display in a glassed chamber above the factory floor. I had been looking forward to this all day, as I had heard rumours that the collection contained some of Australia’s greatest rarities. I was not disappointed.

The first display contained a series of proclamation coins, while the second and third cabinets displayed a few pattern tokens from Australia’s early days. In the next cabinet were our first natively-struck coins, two examples of the Holey Dollar and Dump each (one displaying the obverse and one, the reverse). The four coins looked to be in good nick, and were likely worth a combined $200,000. Next came up our first gold coins, the Adelaide One and Five Pound pieces. There were two examples of each denomination. All four pieces were uniface restrikes. Above them were electrotypes of two Adelaide ingots. Next up was the sovereign display, which was curiously entitled “Australian gold coins 1870 – 1931”. (Sovereigns were minted from 1855.) Presented was one of each of the different sovereign types, as well as an example from each sovereign mint: Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. The 1856 Sydney Mint sovereign on display looked UNC, and would be worth over $100,000 if the reverse was just as good; however, the example of the Type II sovereign, dated 1857, had a nasty scrape across Victoria’s face, which would have body-bagged it with PCGS. The last display of currency-issue coinage contained our Commonwealth coins—the pounds, shillings, and pence. A complete obverse type set was on display, including examples from 1950 and 1955 detailing changes to the obverse legends. (“Emperor of India” was dropped from the obverse in 1949 and “Defender of the Faith” was restored in 1955.) Last of the Commonwealth coin display, and perhaps most impressive, were two 1937 patterns: A 1937 penny and 1937 shilling. These are both great Australian rarities worth in excess of $50,000 each.

The cabinet that followed contained an expansive display of early decimal patterns, off-metal strikes, and trial pieces. All would be worth tens of thousands each in the open market—and all were probably unique. There were obverse patterns struck in London, featuring various renditions of Arnold Machin’s Queen Elizabeth. There were 1959 Melbourne pennies struck in various alloys of silver, shillings and sixpences struck in copper-nickel, and smaller coins struck in various copper alloys. A display of trial pieces followed, including heptagonal, scalloped, and other unusually-shaped pieces. A milled two cent piece was interesting, as was a round ten cent piece with a heptagonal inner border (similar to the new Fijian fifty cent pieces).

No coin museum would be complete without a counterfeit coin display featuring various examples of contemporary counterfeits, as we as the obligatory warning that counterfeiting was illegal. Here, there was a counterfeit cast 1813 dump on display, as well as its moulds. Below it was a counterfeit cast 1852 Type II pound. The next display contained two dies, an 1887 five pound obverse die, as well as a 1937 pattern penny reverse die. I later learned that both dies were manufactured by David Gee, although this was not mentioned in the captions to the display.

Last but not least was the “Scarce Coins” display, which contained coins held specifically for their numismatic significance (rather than their historical significance). Up first was, of course, the 1930 penny, followed by a pair of 1945 proof pennies—one from Perth and one from Melbourne. The gold display contained an 1880-S inverted “A” sovereign, an 1860/61 overdate sovereign, an 1858 Sydney Mint double “R” half sovereign, and a 1920-S sovereign. The display must have been set up a long time ago, as it noted that the 1920-S sovereign was worth “more than $300,000”. (The 1920-S is worth closer to a million dollars today.)

Last stop on our visit was, of course, the “Mint Your Own” coin press, where visitors could strike their very own legal tender. This press is not the same as the mobile presses available at off-site venues such as Sydney’s Royal Easter Show, and Brisbane’s Ekka. Those presses stamp a small counterstamp mark on a coin that has already been struck, while the Mint Your Own press in Canberra strikes a complete coin from a blank planchet. With the push of a green button, we minted two coins, each in gleaming, yellow aluminium bronze. One has already been sent off to PCGS for grading, while we’re keeping the other as a memento. (As an aside, the Mint Your Own mintmarked dollars apparently have different positioning of the interrupted milling than the mintmarked dollars in the four coin pack. Perhaps an eagle-eyed modern coin collector can tell us more.)

On the whole, it was a fun-filled day for everyone. Between the coin exhibits, jumping castle, and cheap food, it was certainly worth the drive down from Sydney. I’m not sure if they’ll plan something like this again next year, but if they do, I’ll be there.