I have a couple British colonial coins from India and Hong Kong. Here's links to the Numista listings for the two that I have: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces6140.html https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces2470.html So I have two questions, wondering if anyone can help. 1. What does the security edge do? Is that something to help prevent counterfeiting? 2. Why does George VI wear a crown on coins for colonies, but not on Commonwealth nation coins (former colonies)? Simply to show the subjugates who's the boss?
Anti-counterfeiting makes sense, at least. Reeded edges were mostly to prevent coin clipping of silver coinage, but that wouldn't matter for the Cu-Ni Hong Kong 50 cents. I've seen specialized edge patterns on coppers, such as these Swedish 1 Skilling coins. For coppers with face value much higher than the value of the copper content, counterfeiting was a real problem in some countries.
Looks as though it was a counterfeiting measure as silver prices increased. If you read the rest of the article in the attached PDF, they reduced the fineness of the coins for this reason to 0.500. As for the crown...idk.
That's true, but he wasn't emperor of India after 1947 and all colonies have the crown on coins, including African colonies. And Elizabeth II also has a crown on colonial coinage but not Commonwealth coinage. @Hiddendragon
