1919/1920 - A centenary of Australian Penny Production

1919/1920 – A centenary of Australian Penny Production

I had envisaged this blog post being a simple recap of those who’ve published prior. The story has proven much more complicated then that. As the study I had thought to accomplish by now is only marginally complete, I’ll attempt to recap my understanding (or lack of) in the following brief passages, with more to follow as the case may be.

The Square Nickel Penny Story

Another story that I have to read into is the idea behind the square nickel penny. It didn’t pan out for political reasons and the urgent call for additional dies to maintain currency output of the classical round penny was put out too late. Dies furnished by London was insufficient for the volume required. As a side note, if you don’t know the square pattern penny, here is a link to Noble auction archives of said coin: https://tinyurl.com/squarepenny

Dots – Mint Marks or Hardness Test?

Recent reading has raised a huge question over the validity of dots as mint marks. The story today suggests Melbourne as dot under bottom scroll (DUBS) and Sydney as producing the dot above bottom scroll (DOBS), on which I will elaborate later. However, a new understanding of the dots as a hardness test muddies the water of this popular understanding. The different steel tests conducted during the slow days of 1930 that led to several 1931 variants is what gives me pause to hesitate about claiming this dot or that dot came from here or there. For more on the steel tests that gave rise to the extremely rare Indian Obverse, dropped 1 1931 penny, see Andrew Crellin’s post here: https://www.sterlingcurrency.com.au/research/1931-indian-penny-dropped-1-reverse-less-1000-were-struck

Does No Dot Mean the Die was Delivered?

It was Fred Lever’s engineering background that re-positioned the question (in my mind) of dots as mintmarks into dots as hardness testing. Fred Lever captures the frantic nature of testing an unknown procedure in the Melbourne Mint with in great detail in the final chapter of “1920 Complete Story” (see link below). For the quick explanation see the screenshot taken on the Wikipedia post concerning the test created in the US in the early 20th Century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_scale

On the subject of die fabrication, see (Sharples (1), pg 25) for correspondance from the Royal Mint. For a concise understanding of annealing vs tempering (processes vital to the creation of dies), the following explanation is quite useful: https://www.metalsupermarkets.com/difference-annealing-tempering/

One question on the subject of adding dots through the hardness testing was answered in reading Andrew Crellin’s article on the 1922 Specimen Penny. According to Crellin, “Former Senior Researcher with the Melbourne branch of the Royal Mint, William (Bill) Mullett has stated that “the 1920 dies to Perth were sent by Sydney so must still have been identical with those used by Sydney. Being hardened it would not have been possible for Sydney to add a mark”.

From this we can surmise that the 1919 no dot pennies come from the 27 English obverse and Birmingham reverse dies provided by London from May to August 1919 (Sharples (1), pg 26). Already hardened in London, no Rockwell testing should have been conducted. Information on die production received late September from the Royal Mint aids the Melbourne Mint to produce 71 English obverse dies and 78 Birmingham reverse dies between September 1919 and March 1920. These should be 1919 dated pennies with dot under scroll, as it is only in August 1920 that 20 Indian obverse and reverse dies are received in Melbourne.

Prior to receipt of said Calcutta dies, Melbourne sent Sydney three English obverse and Birmingham reverse dies, which logically should be dot under scroll. If the shipment had been planned prior to annealing and tempering of the dies, it’s possible that an additional dot was placed above the top scroll to mark the difference in mint production. This is simple conjecture on my part; inspection of double dot pennies might reveal more information.

1919/1920 – A centenary of Australian Penny Production