This has never been written up anywhere I could find: this is an UNCIRCULATED 1970 GB Halfpenny, BUT it is an off metal strike that NGC identified as iron (??) and is a trial - perhaps for the upcoming decimal coinage or other Royal Mint contracts. Anyway, here it is complete with plenty of die polish:
I thought that Britain had switched to the second bust of QEII by then. Still cool that they would've kept the flowing hair design! If I'm collecting coins with her on them, the flowing hair bust is definitely my favorite for a lot of reasons, one being a lot of silver, especially Canadian coins produced. How much is that coin worth?
I suppose whatever it would bring at auction as this is right up my alley and have in 30+ years seen no others. I would imagine a couple of thousand USD.
That's true, at least on Commonwealth coinage. Looks like in 1970, they minted 750,000 proof half pennies, though standard production stopped in 1967. The bust changed in 1968, which makes sense as to why it has the old bust. https://www.ngccoin.com/price-guide...ny-km-896-1954-1970-cuid-1132600-duid-1325223 Not sure what the story is, but I guess it was a test, struck that year with the proof coinage? Not sure why it would be MS though. Where did you get the coin, @7Jags ?
Could have been struck in the 1980s for the same reason as per the conversation I had with Graham Dyer regarding the item below, which is struck in stainless steel and we have discussed elsewhere.
I am wondering if this was the composition of the Halfpenny as well - iron? Hard to believe....BTW, Rob, please let me know if you ever want to sell.
It's possible, but equally unlikely, as they will have tried many different elemental compositions. As Graham said when I queried the above, 'Forget the dies and concentrate on the metal mix'. They obviously test each variation in metal mix for suitability or quality of strike. So it is possible, even likely, that your selection of off-metal strikes from the 1960s dies etc were all made for this purpose rather than ascribing them to 'Mint fun'. The first thing he said was the Half-Crown Sample above was struck in the 1980s rather than being a prospective halfcrown. What is needed is a proper analysis of each piece rather than pointing a gun at it and saying it's iron or nickel or whatever just because that is the major peak. We all know that slight variations in alloy can have a significant effect on the suitability of the material for any specific purpose. For the record, the above trial piece gave Chromium 12.31%, Manganese 0.78% and Iron 86.91%. But this was qualitative data only, as I wasn't going to spend 10K on a set of metal standards for something valued in the hundreds, so only an approximation. Qualitative analysis, while useful, is only half the story because the material characteristics depend on the extras.
Interesting. Yes, I do have a number of OMS strikes including all of the pennies 1964-67 in apparently copper nickel alloys, but also several halfpennies, including one in aluminum for the 1960-70 period & even some threepences and shillings, etc.
You can send it back to NGC and they will do a detailed analysis of the metal composition and list the breakdown on the insert. Last time I looked (years) it was like $75 for this service. And really cool coin!!
Ah, thanks Greg. I have ever so slowly been building a collection of OMS British coins of the 1920-1970 period (not that many but a few)....I may ask them to do the elemental. One problem with XRF is that it measures only surface composition & saw where one side of a coin has one composition and the other some other composition.
