Australian crown

Australia struck crowns in 1937 and 1938 only. Three separate records of them survive in the Royal Mint's reports, and until now nobody had checked them against each other. They agree exactly.

The 1939 line is the interesting one. No crown bears the date 1939 and none was struck that year. But £200 of the 1937 coinage and £400 of the 1938 coinage had not gone out, and £200 plus £400 is exactly the £600 the Treasury issued in 1939. The tail of a two-year coinage, released a year late.

The 1939 figure sits in a column that sums to its own printed total of £247,850 exactly: Crowns ... ... ... 600

And a third witness that never moves. From 1945 to 1966 every report prints a cumulative table, AUSTRALIAN COIN—TOTAL ISSUED BY THE COMMONWEALTH, whose 5s. column reads £275,600 and never changes again. It appears 38 times across those 22 years, which is 38 independent printings of the same total.

So Australia's entire crown coinage was £275,600, or 1,102,400 pieces, confirmed three ways from three different series. The 1937 figure that follows from it is 1,000,800. We note, without a source we can cite for it, that the figure usually given for 1937 is 1,008,000, which would make the total 7,200 pieces larger than any of these three records allows.

These are not mintages by date, and this catalogue will not print them as if they were. They are what the Sydney, Melbourne and Perth branches reported striking, delivering or issuing during a report year. A single year's delivery routinely carried two dates: the 1958 report says florins and sixpences to a stated value "were dated 1957; the remainder of the coin delivered being dated 1958".

3 records. 2 of them are recorded in pounds sterling rather than in coins, because that is how the mints kept the books. 0 name the date borne by the coin.