1959 Half Penny Error

[ausjack]

oh I see how it works now, it strikes and then bounces across so it's not really a true strike as such..thank team

[emu666]

Yes AJ. That's a good way of describing it. It is seen often on Melbourne Mint pennies of the late 1940s to early 1950s (the so called double dates or re-engraved dates; which of course they are not).

[ausjack]

Cool thanks emu, it seems like the mints go through different stages of lack of quality control from time to time as I have been doing a lot of decimal noodling and when I start I seperate them into the years and it's here where you see a few things like low mintage or years where they pumped that many out it's not funny and how when we find an error there's usually a few around a few eg's are the bubbles and common cuds like rabbit ears etc and when looking at the years you can see that the early coins had more effort put in and better quality control when you compare the amount of errors and just the look of the older coins as a lot have a lot better detail..I want a job a the mint

[markn]

The obverse Strike 2 appears to me to be suffering
"Mechanical Doubling" rather than multiple strikes.

Either way a very nice example of a Double Strike.

Sounds good to me. The width of each letter should be the same on each strike. The obverse shows the classic terraced look due to the hammer die scraping across the design on retraction .

Given that the doubling is present on almost all the legends on both sides of the coin and all show the same degree of rotation I'd contend that this absolutely is not strike doubling.  The coin has rotated around the center point of the coin in between strikes.

The lettering also shows the characteristic spidery and thinned appearance of every multiple struck coin I've ever seen.

[ausjack]

now I'm lost..thanks Mark

[markn]

OK here's a detailed image of the AUS and the HAL off of the reverse of the coin.  Obviously the AUS is on the top half of the coin and the HAL is from the bottom half of the coin.  If the coin rotated clockwise between strikes you'd expect the doubling to the RIGHT of the last strike on the top of the coin and the LEFT of the last strike on the bottom of the coin.  And that's exactly what we're seeing here.

[ausjack]

thanks mate..you get some ripper coins, found out anything about that dollar yet?

[markn]

thanks mate..you get some ripper coins, found out anything about that dollar yet?

Nope.  Nothing.  That coin is likely to remain a mystery.

[ausjack]

poop, I wanted to know anything about that one There's some very strange things going on in our mints :dodgy: