1916-I Mule Half Penny

In 1916 the Calcutta

Mint

a facility that produces coins

 

mint produced half pennies for Australia (Learn more about the 1916-I Half Penny) as neither the Sydney, Melbourne nor Perth

Mint

a facility that produces coins

 

mints were prepared to produce bronze coins. A very small number of 1916 half pennies were mistakenly struck with the

Obverse

The heads side of the coin

 

obverse of an Indian one quarter anna though this was not discovered until June 1965 when Cecil Poole found one in Adelaide (Triton Technologies International Ltd, 2001). This type of

Error

A coin struck with a significant enough or amount of flaws that it should not have been permitted into circulation

 

error is called a

Mule

An error coin in which the obverse and reverse of two different coins are mixed together

 

mule.

The half penny can be identified by three distinguishing features:

1. A simpler
   Legend

   
   The inscription around the inner edge of the coin
    
   legend in English, as opposed to the Latin
   Legend

   
   The inscription around the inner edge of the coin
    
   legend used in the Australian
   Obverse

   
   The heads side of the coin
    
   obverse.
2. No pearls in the crown of George V
3. An elephant on the shoulder of King George V

There was much initial skepticism on the authenticity of the piece and in June 1966 and was heavily debated in the Australian Coin Review from November 1965 to January 1967. In June 1966 the piece was authenticated by the Royal Australian mint and in January 1967 by the British Museum and Spink & Son finally settling the question on its authenticity (Triton Technologies International Ltd, 2001).

It's incredible that such an obvious

Error

A coin struck with a significant enough or amount of flaws that it should not have been permitted into circulation

 

error had not been identified earlier but this could be easily justified by the lack of coin collectors of the time, since then an additional 4 examples have been discovered and 2 more possibly exist in private collections (Sterling & Currency, 2008).

Image: (Powerhouse Museum, 2010)

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