1920 M Australian Penny

Description

The Australian penny coin was a small circulating denomination of the Australian Pound. It has the same dimensions and composition as the British pre-decimal penny, from which it is derived (for a time, the coins circulated in parallel and were interchangeable in Australia – but not in the United Kingdom; the currencies were fixed at par). It was worth one twelfth of an Australian shilling and 1/240 of an Australian pound.

The reverse of the first type of Australian penny coins features text only. In 1938, a new design superseded it – featuring the iconic leaping kangaroo; the old type of coins remained in circulation.

The coins were struck by a number of different mints, with various mint marks:
– Royal Mint, 1911 – 1915, no mint mark; 1951, letters PL
– Birmingham Mint (ex Heaton and Sons), 1912 – 1915, letter H
– Calcutta Mint, 1916 – 1918, letter I
– Melbourne Mint, 1919 – 1964, no mint mark
– Sydney Mint, 1920 – 1926, no mint mark
– Perth Mint, 1922, no mint mark; 1940 – 1964, dot between designer’s initials: K.G or dot after denomination: PENNY.
– Bombay Mint, 1942 – 1945, dots before and after the denomination: .PENNY., plus letter I on the obverse

Counting the known mintages of proofs, a total of 814,788,088 (815 million) coins of the denomination were minted during its existence. They circulated until decimalisation and were withdrawn in 1966, when Australia switched to its current Australian Dollar currency. Unlike some of the larger denominations, they were not re-denominated into units of the new currency. However, the penny coins were never formally demonetised and are still legal tender for 10⁄12¢.

Additional information