1935 florin

au-florin-1935

A coin of this date, photographed

Museums Victoria holds 2 of these and photographs each one, which is a documented proof that a coin bearing this date exists. It says nothing about how many were struck, and is not counted as a mintage anywhere here.

What they hold: proof, circulating.

Proof Coin - Florin (2 Shillings), Specimen Strike, Australia, 1935, photographed by Museums Victoria
Photographer: Naomi Andrzejeski, Museums Victoria, https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/55863 (CC BY 4.0)
Proof Coin - Florin (2 Shillings), Specimen Strike, Australia, 1935, photographed by Museums Victoria
Photographer: Naomi Andrzejeski, Museums Victoria, https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/55863 (CC BY 4.0)
Coin - Florin (2 Shillings), Australia, 1935, photographed by Museums Victoria
Photographer: Naomi Andrzejeski, Museums Victoria, https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/55978 (CC BY 4.0)
Coin - Florin (2 Shillings), Australia, 1935, photographed by Museums Victoria
Photographer: Naomi Andrzejeski, Museums Victoria, https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/55978 (CC BY 4.0)

Proof Coin - Florin (2 Shillings), Specimen Strike, Australia, 1935 proof
Coin - Florin (2 Shillings), Australia, 1935 circulating

Mintage

no-coin-dated-figure 1,265,000 pieces

No document names how many coins were struck bearing the date 1935. These are report-year figures, counted as issued, and a coin dated 1935 was drawn from deliveries like these. Treating one of them as the mintage of a 1935 coin is what most published figures do, and it is the conflation this catalogue exists to document: the reports themselves record dates carrying over from one report year into the next.

FigureMintWhat was countedSource, and its own words
915,000 Melbourne issued
what the Melbourne mint issued during report year 1935
Reports of the Deputy Master and Comptroller of the Royal Mint, Australian branch sections
processés of coining being, Australian florins, 91,5001; shillings, 25,0001. ;

£91,500 x 10 coins per pound

1,265,000 not stated issued
what the Commonwealth Treasury issued across the whole of Australia during 1935
Reports of the Deputy Master of the Royal Mint, Australian branch memoranda and appendices
The issues from the Commonwealth Treasury for the whole of Australia were :— SILVER. ,5 £ Florins ... ... ... 126,500 Shillings ... ... ... I 37,800 Sixpences ... ... ... 41,200 Threepences 38,400 243,900 BRONZE. £ Pence 20,700 Halfpence ..

£126,500 x 10 coins per pound

What can be said instead

No document names a figure for coins dated 1935. The reports do say what the branch mints delivered in the report years around it, and a coin of this date had to come from one of those deliveries.

Report yearAs the report prints itIn piecesMint
1935 91,5001 915,000Melbourne
1936 238,2001. 2,382,000Melbourne

So at most 3,297,000 pieces can bear the date 1935, if Coins dated 1935 were struck in report year 1935 or 1936.

The reports describe dates lagging by a year, but not always by only one: the 1939 report records that Melbourne went on using 1936 dies throughout 1937. Where a date persisted, the true figure can exceed this ceiling.

Where the usual figure comes from. A figure near 915,000 for 1935 is what you get by taking the report year 1935 delivery and treating it as the coin’s date. That is not a guess about what other sources do: on fourteen penny years where a widely used public guide could be checked against these reports, five reproduce exactly as the pound figure times its coins per pound with the last three digits dropped, the residuals being 200, 400, 600, 800 and 800. The other nine differ by millions, which is what happens when the report year and the coin’s date genuinely come apart. The working is here.

What this page does not tell you

It does not tell you what the coin is worth. A catalogue can honestly report how many were struck, what metal is in one, and what the documents say. It cannot report a market price without either inventing it or copying someone who might have. So this catalogue reports the first three and stays quiet about the fourth.

All florin issues