1963 penny

No document names a figure for coins dated 1963. 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.

So at most 175,718,400 pieces can bear the date 1963, if Coins dated 1963 were struck in report year 1963 or 1964.

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 mintage of 38,809,200 for 1963 is what you get by taking the report year 1963 delivery and treating it as the coin’s date. That is the commonest figure in circulation for this coin and it rests on an assumption the reports themselves contradict, which is why this catalogue prints it here as an explanation rather than above as a mintage.

Almost every figure in any coin catalogue counts a report year. This one does not: the Mint stated, in prose, which date the coins carried. That is what a collector means by a mintage, and it is recorded almost nowhere.

The report states the date these coins BORE, which is what a collector means by a mintage and what almost no source records. But it is a PART of one report year's delivery, not the whole coinage of 1963: the same report says the remainder carried a different date. Coins of this date struck in other years are not included here.

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.