1930 penny london die - die markers

[fred lever]

Re #45. "From the two images I could find there didn't seem to be any common die markers."

Agree, you would like a big crack or dot showing but there is nothing to be seen apart from the fact they are English obverses.

Fred.

[gnome61]

Found this interesting while doing some follow up reading. These are a couple of extracts from mint reports from the Melbourne Mint. The years are 1930 and 1931, not sure if this has been shared before. 

[gnome61]

Also this bit from 1930 as well, the amount of visitors having a visit and the specimens struck.

[Basilstate]

Thanks Gnome,interesting,my biggest concern/surprise was back in the 1960's when researchers stated the Melb. Mint did not have counters on their machines,mintage was estimated by weight of minted Coins.

[fred lever]

Hi Gnome,
For our viewers that may have just come in and not aware of the immense amount of material and research done on the year 1930 at the Mint (Holland, Saxton, Mullett, Sharples all the way to  Briggs, Effendi and many many others).
Iinteresting reading illustrating the danger when official figures are taken in isolation and can be interpreted many ways.
You can see how myths arise about the 1930 penny!
That reports indicates that 600,000 pennies were produced in 1930.
 Assumption: is that they were dated 1930 so 600,000 1930 pennies must have been made not a couple of thousand like those experts say.
Groan.
And 428 visitors were admitted to view the Operative departments, therefore at least 428, 1930 pennies were handed out to visitors!
Groannnn.
Assumptions: pennies were handed out, "visitors" were tourists gawking at machines.

And that is why researchers from Bill Mullett of the Mint and Sharples of the Museum  started examining actual press books and other documents to figure out what actually happened in the workshops and figuring out what dies and what dates were actually made!

A very complex and exhausting area of research i have had the opportunity to be involved in and report on.

Fred.

[gnome61]

Yeah hope you feel better after all those groans. I was only sharing because I still have unanswered questions like the part about 43,000 (L) in Bronze coin being exported to the United Kingdom in 1930 when there was 600,000 pennies supposedly struck ( as per the Melbourne mint report) or the info about the bronze coins sent to New Zealand also in 1930 ( as per the mint report from London). Still a work in progress for me and I won't be bothering anyone else with this stuff.
Thanks Basil I found it interesting myself.

[serenitystan]

Found this interesting while doing some follow up reading. These are a couple of extracts from mint reports from the Melbourne Mint. The years are 1930 and 1931, not sure if this has been shared before. Looks to me as the extract regarding the one that says (The issues of coin from this branch compare with those of 1929 is wrong. As the mint did make 0.63M half pennies in 1930. Could be the 600.000 was meant for the halfpenny..

[pra666]

43,000 (pounds?) in bronze coins exported to the UK may refer to British bronze coins being repatriated as the paragraph above refers to British silver coins.

[nealeffendi]

Hi gnome; the 43,000/- of bronze exported to Britain is obviously English pennies as from the mid 1920s they were being withdrawn from circulation. The previous sentence mentions that the English silver had already mostly been withdrawn so the inference is that they were not concerned for many years about withdrawing the bronze due to the shortage of pennies into the early 1920s but now with the depression there was lots of surplus bronze and that sent back to England is over half a million pennies/halfpennies.
I wonder why they made so many dies and if they were all dated 1930.
And if Australia had a surplus of bronze coins what did London do with crates/drums filled with tons of dirty old coins arriving to add to their own depression surplus?

[fred lever]

Hi Gnome, yeah I am still groaning!
For the viewers just tuning in:
The assumption here  in  reading the review report by itself, is the figure of 600,000 meant STRUCK that year.

NO, it means they transferred 600,000 pennies out of STOCK .
They had a store chokko with 1929  and other dated  pennies.
Hence no orders in 1930 for pennies from production.

Mullet, in "Particular coins"  gives a very detailed breakdown of coins struck  and dies used in the late 20's and early 30's.
Study that and you get a much better idea of what was where in 1930.
The Mint report just gives a yearly roundup of gross figures.

Cheers, Fred.

[Mister T]

There's one currently up for auction: https://www.smallsauctions.com/auction-lot/australia-1930-penny-english-obverse-pcgs-xf45_1bd466e866?catalogRedirectURL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.smallsauctions.com%2Fauction-catalog%2FBest-of-the-Best-Australian-Pre-decimal-Coins_7YIA6WIRJI