1918 halfpenny
au-halfpenny-1918
A coin of this date, photographed
Museums Victoria holds one 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: circulating.
Coin - Halfpenny, Australia, 1918 circulating
Mintage
no-coin-dated-figure 1,440,000 pieces
No document names how many coins were struck bearing the date 1918. This counts what Calcutta Mint, India (mintmark I) struck for Australia during report year 1918, which is a different quantity: Australia's early coin was made in England and India, and the reports state a report year rather than the date on the coin.
| Figure | Mint | What was counted | Source, and its own words |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,440,000 | Calcutta Mint, India (mintmark I) | struck-in-report-year what Calcutta Mint, India (mintmark I) struck for Australia during report year 1918 |
Reports of the Deputy Master of the Royal Mint, Imperial and Colonial coinage appendices
Halfpenny I 1,440,000 _’ 3,000 I \ , 3,000 I £3,000 x 480 coins per pound |
What can be said instead
No document names a figure for coins dated 1918. 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 year | As the report prints it | In pieces | Mint |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1918 | 6,9301. | 3,326,400 | Sydney |
So at most 3,326,400 pieces can bear the date 1918, if Coins dated 1918 were struck in report year 1918 or 1919.
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 3,326,400 for 1918 is what you get by taking the report year 1918 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.