Did you ever wonder when the elusive 1930 Australian penny became so sought after? For some reason it wasn’t immediately valuable, even though very few were struck due to the Great Depression and the cancellation of orders from the Commonwealth Government.
However, it is thought that 1,000 or so were produced at the Melbourne Mint in test runs, and that they were inadvertently released into circulation with the run of 1931 coins. Of course the public were unaware of this. There were also 6 finely finished ‘proof’ specimens, intended to be preserved for posterity. One went to the Museum of Victoria, one to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and one to the British Museum. The final three somehow ended up in private hands.
It was not until the 1940s that a few dealers and collectors became aware that some 1930 pennies were in circulation.
In 1945 George Raymond, a coin dealer located in Bathurst Street, Sydney. advertised that he would pay ten shillings for each penny.
A piece in the Sydney Sun dated May 24 1945 began;
Find the penny is Sydney’s latest game among newsboys, bank-tellers, and shop-assistants. It was started by a city numismatist (sorry! coin specialist to you.)
At first everyone was optimistic about finding one, but soon it became clear just how rare the penny was. A city bank teller expressed his annoyance to a Sun reporter; ‘Don’t bring up that 1930 penny business’, he said. ‘I went through £40 of ’em- that’s 9,600! But do you think I could find a 1930 penny? Not on your life.’
Meanwhile. Mr Raymond had managed to buy three coins, although he said it had cost him £4 in advertising.
There was talk that American servicemen station in Australia had paid £5 each for the coins during the war after realising they were rare, but that seems unlikely to me.
By 1950 the price of the penny had risen to £10. This was the price paid by Sydney antiques dealer Mr. J. H. Burden, who said he had been searching his change for years before giving up and buying one.
The cartoonists were delighted to have some new material;
IMPOSTER PENNY ‘ARRESTED’ ON FLIGHT
Where there is something valuable there is generally an attempt by criminals to ‘cash-in’. Forgeries began to appear. Most commonly the ‘3’ in 1933 pennies was carefully altered to a zero. In 1964, detectives in Canberra had a tip-off that a counterfeit coin had been paid out in change at the airport. The Department of Civil Aviation contacted six planes bound for Melbourne and Sydney from Canberra and asked that passengers check to see whether they had the illicit penny. Sure enough, a woman enroute to Sydney found it in her purse. It was returned to Canberra as part of an on-going police investigation.
DECIMALISATION DRIVES UP THE PRICE OF THE PENNY
Remember the television jingle in the lead-up to decimalisation?
‘In come the dollars, in come the cents, to replace the pounds and the shillings and the pence.’
As the new coins took over, people began to collect the old currency.
The photo below shows a set which includes the first post Federation penny to be minted in Australia, in 1911. The final specimen is a 1964 coin, the last before decimal currency in 1966. Yes, there is a blank space, where the 1930 penny should be. Naturally, hardly anyone could compile a full set.
Source – The Perth Mint.
Canberra was also the location for an auction in 1977 at which a Curtin resident paid $2,500 for that special penny. I loved this brief addition in the subsequent newspaper report;
‘A fake penny very similar to the authentic one brought $50.’Â Â (Canberra Times, April 18 1977.)
Spotting a dud. The zero on counterfeit coins is often more elongated.
Genuine at left, fake at right.
By the way, the highest price ever paid for a 1930 penny was in 2019, when 1,25 million dollars changed hands. It’s important to remember that this was for one of those six perfect proof coins, not for one found in an old jam jar.
