First Assumption: South African coins struck during WWII were struck in in the UK. Second Assumption: Royal Mint practices during WWII were a bit more conservative considering war-time material usage. Third Assumption: Coin collecting in the UK is not as concerned about errors as in the US (and Canada). Here is a 1943 South Africa 3d coin. It looks like the "43" has been either repunched or recut. If that is correct I suspect that was done to extend the die life and conserve steel. Am I even close on my analysis?
What number do you think it was beforehand? If any. It looks like it was a 43 before and still a 43. Are you thinking they had excess coins at some point and then re-struck them to save metal? Which would have been more economical : melting, then making new coins, or re-striking the dates? Seems like re-striking would have been more economical, but I'm not considering man-hours since I don't know the British process anyway.
My "repunched or recut" statement was in reference to the dies used to strike coins. It was wartime and steel was important to the production of items for the military. So instead of creating new dies the Royal Mint "repunched or recut" the existing dies (at least this is my conjecture). What I'm trying to determine is if my thinking is correct ... or at least in the ballpark. I've got two 1945 South Africa 3d coins that have different features but may fall under the same situation.
As from 1923, all S. African coins were produced in the Pretoria mint, which has also produced coins for the British Commonwealth (West Africa, Rhodesia etc). The only S.A. coins to circulate in the UK were the gold sovereign which carry the SA mintmark
My book on British & Commonwealth coins makes no mention of a double strike on the 1943 silver (.800) threepenny bit
I don't think from the appearance of the date that it was a double strike. It just looks to me like they did some work on the obverse die. I'll take pics of the two 1945 3d coins and post them later.
Gotcha ! I thought you were referring to the metal from the coins. Sorry. But those do look cool, don't they !! And no way are they just MD or DDD, right?
As self-appointed spokesperson for the UK I don't believe we'd consider that to be an error. An error is a mistake - this is a deliberate reinforcement of a worn number to extend the life of a die. We'd call it a variety (3 over 3, perhaps 3 over higher 3 or some such thing).
