The Royal Australian Mint announced last week that they’d be moving one of their portable presses into a public area of the mint and applying a poppy counterstamp to 2015 $2 circulation Lest We Forget coins. These $2 coins with the red ring on the reverse have been extremely popular among collectors and for just $10 visitors to the mint from the 9th to the 11th of October could purchase one of the coins with a poppy symbol stamped into the center of the reverse. Interested collectors could press the button on the portable press themselves, or for those in a hurry purchase the coins already counterstamped. You can see what the counterstamped poppy two dollar coin looks like above. The coin is supplied in a plastic capsule in a printed information card (see the image at the bottom of this post). We’ve heard rumours of quotas of 1000 coins per day (meaning a mintage of 3,000) but the packaging of the coin says the mintage of the coin is 30,000. We’ll only really know for certain when the RAM annual reports are released. One suspects that given the packaging states the mintage is 30,000 and the RAM isn’t likely to sell that many at the mint in 3 days that we could see the coin for sale via other channels, likely via dealer allocations or other events held in the upcoming weeks. Check your favourite coin dealer website or the RAM website in the days and weeks to come.

Given that the red 2015 $2 coin has been super popular and this counterstamp coin is only available in Canberra to visitors to the RAM AND it was only announced a couple of days before release we expected this coin to generate something of a feeding frenzy among collectors. Clearly the RAM thought the same, when the queue was long they restricted purchasers to counterstamping only two coins at a time (but you could obviously queue back up to get two more and so on). According to the RAM Facebook page they restricted customers to purchasing 10 of the pre-counterstamped coins at a time. The secondary market for the coin has already kicked off with a quick look at eBay showing that these coins are now selling for between $20-$30. As always we suggest collectors give things a few weeks to settle before they look to purchase these coins as typically prices spike early before settling to a more sensible level.

September ninth brings a special milestone in the history of the British monarchy. On this date Queen Elizabeth II will surpass Queen Victoria as the longest reigning monarch of 63 years and 216 days. As part of the British Commonwealth Australia celebrates this event with a commemorative coin design being depicted on a non-circulating 50c and on a $5 coin. The design by the Royal Australian Mint’s Bronwyn King features Her Majesty’s Royal insignia and Australia’s golden wattle. In the centre facing vertically is a depiction of the anointing spoon used at the Queen’s Coronation in 1953 in which an oil was used of neroli, jasmine, rose, cinnamon, benzoin, musk, civet and ambergris with some of those flowers also depicted in the design.

This design is being struck on a dodecagonal NCLT cupro-nickel 50 cent and also a $5 one ounce round silver proof coin. The fine silver proof is also included in a three coin set with a £5 from the British Royal Mint and a $20 from the Royal Canadian Mint who have also struck commemorative designs for the occasion.

Update 4 – 1kg 1993 Platinum Uniface Koala Facsimile Coin Imaged

Update 3 – Problems with Perth Mint Advertising Pieces for more than 20 years!

Update 2 – We’ve been in contact with the Perth Mint, mystery solved!

Update 1 – We got our hands on some “trial strikes”!

Back in 2010 I saw my first off metal Perth Mint “trial strike” in the auction lots of a well known Queensland auction house. It was uniface, made from aluminium and showed the reverse design of a 10 ounce kookaburra coin. Right now I can’t remember what year the “trial strike” was but it was from the early 1990’s. Over the ensuing years I’d seen several more appear from time to time in auctions and on eBay, where they tended to sell between $200 and $500 dollars and mostly be dated from the early 1990’s. It always baffled me how so many “trial strikes” escaped into the wild and I had always assumed that they were not trial strikes at all but paper weights with the felt removed. Perth Mint DO make coin shaped paperweights (see here for an example) and based on emails I sent to the Perth Mint they have done so for a long period of time.

However, the design of these “trial strikes” didn’t match the paperweights I could find. The “trial strikes” purported to be from 1 kilo, or 10 oz, 2 oz or 1 oz silver coins and as far as I could see all the paperweights the Perth Mint have sold have been gold plated. Mystery unsolved I gave up on the idea that the “trial strikes” were paperweights and perhaps were actually trial strikes. Until January 2015 this year when I was in Sydney in the offices of Wynyard Coins and I saw this:

It’s a lovely marketing board (we know now these are called Portfolio Boards) showing all of the coins available from the Perth Mint back in 1993. And hey look it’s covered in representations (or facsimiles) of Perth Mint coins….made from some sort of white metal. I couldn’t get one off to hold it but I strongly doubt the items representing the silver coins were silver any more than those representing gold or platinum coins were gold or platinum! Here’s a closer view:

And are they uniface? Well I am glad you asked, yes they are!

It’s not entirely clear from the image but the “coins” were definitely uniface.

As far as I am concerned, that’s mystery solved about the so called Perth Mint uniface trial strikes struck in aluminium. They are almost certainly pieces removed from these nice looking Perth Mint Port Folio Boards.

Update 10 September 2015

A reader of this blog has sent us in some Perth Mint advertising items which you can see below. He bought them at a coin shop in Melbourne. The larger uniface item weights 7.32g and has diameter of 25.05mm. It represents the 1994 1/2 ounce platinum coin and when purchased was described by the coin dealer as coming from a Perth Mint advertising board similar to that shown above. The smaller item with the pad-printed monkey is 15.82mm in diameter and weighs 2.41g. When purchased it was described as a promotional item given by the Perth Mint to international dealers to promote their 2004 lunar coin program.

Now, there’s one important observation to be made about both these items. Neither is aluminium as they are far too heavy for their size to be made of that metal. What they are made from is unknown, we’ll be shooting an email off to the Perth Mint shortly asking what they are made of. We’ll also have to endeavour to get our hands on the 1oz and 2oz advertising pieces to see what they are made from!

Update 14 September 2015

We’ve been in contact with Pauline Burns, the senior customer services office from the Perth Mint. Here’s what she had to say with regards to both the items imaged above:

I have referred your email to our Marketing division and confirm the following.

The Monkey Medallion was Silver and made by The Perth Mint purely as a promotional piece.
2004 was the first time the mint had struck Coloured Australian Lunar.

The Koala Facsimiles are silver plated Copper – these were stuck onto Portfolio Boards for display at various conventions etc. They were made for a number of years.

Kind regards
Pauline Burns
Senior Customer Services Officer
The Perth Mint

So, that answers the question regarding the small pad-printed item, it is silver and it was struck as a promotional item. Pauline also supplied some Perth Mint production paperwork along with her email that called that item a Miniature Silver Monkey Medallion, that it was struck from 999 silver and had a nominal mass of 2g (despite our item weighing about 0.5g more). It confirms what the larger “Koala Facsimile” is too, a silver plated copper item designed for a “Portfolio Board”. However, there remains one question outstanding, what about the aluminium uniface trial strikes that spawned this entire blog article? Well, we shot off another email to Pauline and she answered very quickly with:

Marketing has confirmed that the Koalas were Silver Plated Copper, Kookaburras Silver Plated Aluminium and Kangaroos Gold Plated Copper.

Bingo. There’s our answer, the facsimile uniface kookaburras for the Portfolio Boards are silver plated aluminium. The facsimiles of the gold kangaroos and the platinum koalas are plated copper! Mystery solved!

Update 26 December 2015

As part of our project to create an online index for the Australian Coin Review magazine we’ve just confirmed that this issue with Perth Mint Facsimile Advertising items has been going on for more than 20 years! On page 9 of the October 1994 issue of The Australian Coin Review there’s an article titled “All That Glitters” concerning electroplated bronze facsimile coins made for the Monex Deposit Company in the USA. The article says:

They are the same size as the one ounce gold nugget and the one ounce platinum koala. The reverse design is also identical, even to the specification of the metal.

It appears that these facsimile coins also had an identical obverse design and the only way to pick them from the real McCoy was to pick them up as they only weighed about half an ounce rather than the full ounce. Here comes the rub though, someone passed them off as real bullion:

Naturally, some bright spark has loaded up two Californian dealers with a couple of pairs of these pieces in a quantity of other bullion and one of the dealers is somewhat irate.

Turns out the Perth Mint thought the weight difference would be enough to make the origins of these items obvious. Nope. The article goes on to say that the Perth Mint would include “Replica Not Gold (or Platinum)” on the reverse of the advertising pieces from that point forward. While not exactly the same issue as the uniface advertising pieces it highlights the dangers of items that are not clearly marked for what they really are!

Update 6 May 2016

On a recent trip to Melbourne we saw a facsimile of a 1 kilo 1993 Platinum Koala in a major dealer’s display cabinet. It wasn’t for sale but the dealer kindly agreed to loan it to us so we could take a picture of it. We asked the dealer if he knew what the item was, he said, “sure it’s an advertising piece made by the Perth Mint and it’s silver plated copper”. Eureka! It looks like the message is spreading regarding the true origins of these items. He wasn’t quite right though, it’s silver plated aluminium. You can see our image of the advertising piece below, it is 73mm in diameter and weighs 111 grams. Amusingly enough is still has the double sided tape on the reverse so it can be stuck to an advertising board.

For those who like a bit of maths, the specific gravity of platinum is 21.45 while that of Aluminium ranges from 2.5 to 2.8. Given that the size of the above planchet is the same as a real 1 kilo platinum coin this means if it really is struck in aluminium it should weight 115g to 131g. Which is just a few grams more than what this facsimile weighs.