Australian Commonwealth Coinage

From 1911 to 1964 Australia had its own coinage based on the British system of pounds, shillings and pence. The pound was divided into 20 shillings and the shilling was divided into 12 pence. The penny was also divided into two halfpence (and in Great Britain and a handful of other Commonwealth nations, it could also be divided into four farthings).

Errors and Varieties

Generally an error is an unintentional change to a working die while a variety is a possibly (and probably) intentional change to any die or design, though the distinction is not always clear-cut.

Catalogue

Australia used seven of the multitude of predecimal denominations that Great Britain did - namely the halfpenny, penny, threepence, sixpence, shilling, florin and crown. Half sovereigns and sovereigns were also struck at the Sydney, Melbourne and Perth Mints but strictly speaking they were British coins struck in Australia. They did circulate in Australia along with other sovereigns struck throughout the empire though.

Bronze
1/2d (halfpenny) 1911 to 1964
1d (penny) 1911 to 1964

Silver
3d (threepence) 1910 to 1964
6d (sixpence) 1910 to 1963
1/- (shilling) 1910 to 1963
2/- (florin) 1910 to 1963
5/- (crown) 1937 to 1938

Gold
10/- (half sovereign) to 1918
£1 (sovereign) to 1931

Other web pages dealing with numismatics

Harold Fears has a website on the coins of Jersey which used some of the same obverse dies as Australia's predecimal coins.

Michael Gouby has a shop and website on the coins of Great Britain.