This is the first one of these I've seen, but I like it, too. I've also found a few coins outside my normal collecting interests, just because I liked them. Thanks for posting.
The coinage of this territory which officially became a British Protectorate in 1888 (when Britain took over the North Borneo Chartered Company) was all produced by the Heaton mint in Birmingkam, UK - hence the letter H on all coins. With a territory of under 29,000 square miles and a with an estimated population of less than 100,000 in 1881, consisting mainly in "settlers on the coast and aboriginal tribes inland," the mintage figures seem rather excessive. Taking just the 1 cents alone, in the five year period 1886 to 1890, 34 million were produced - 340 per head! 1885 1 million 1886 5 million 1887 6 million 1888 6 million 1889 9 million 1890 8 million Compare this with Australia which, with a population in 1911 of 4.6 million when it began minting its own coins in that year, produced in the first five years a little under 13 million pennies. The BNB 2½ cent was produced only in two years, 1903, mintage 2,000,000 and in 1920 with a much smaller mintage of 280,000. The 5 cents were produced in only 8 years from 1903 to 1941, with 1 million each in the first and last year, and amounts between 100,000 and 500,000 – that of 1938 was half a million. There are four known variations in the BNB coinage: on the 1891 half cent where the H mintmark almost touches the shield on the 1886 1 cent where the figure 6 is lower and out of alignment on the 1887 1 cent where the 7 is wider spaced than the other numerals on the 1890 1 cent where the 0 is smaller than the other numerals. The 1890 is the only scarce variation, but the valuation of this and the other three remain unaffected.
