Australia Half Crown coins

WillieBoyd2

Australia Half Crown coins

Does anyone know the reason that Australia never issued a Half Crown (2-1/2 Shilling) coin?

Google is useless, requests come up with other half crowns (New Zealand, etc).

StubbyMcNumbthumbs

I don't know the reason, but I know they only issued Crowns in 1937 and 1938. They never issued farthings either.

ProofArtworkonCircs

The United kindom had 2 shillings (florin) and 2 1/2 shilling (half crown) coins. After decimialzation that would be 10 and 12 1/2 new pence. That is quite close together. It is not surprising that certain jurisdictions skipped one or the order. If memory serves me right, Australia had 2 shilling coins and no half crowns. South Africa had half crowns and no two shilling pieces.

mrpotatoheadd

<< <i>South Africa had half crowns and no two shilling pieces. >>

Psssst...

ProofArtworkonCircs

<<Psssst...>>

Well, that is most interesting. I will have to dig out my Krause and start researching. I have not visited this subject in about 60 years.
About 1950, I remember (I think) telling a recently imigrated South African lad that Britain had two shilling coins. He didn't believe me.

Sapyx

<< <i>Does anyone know the reason that Australia never issued a Half Crown (2-1/2 Shilling) coin? >>


We simply didn't want them. The Coinage Act of 1909 stipulated the silver denominations we could strike: florins, shillings, sixpences and threepences; the Act was amended in 1936 to allow for crowns. Halfcrowns and farthings were never on the list.

Trawling through Australian newspaper archives from the early 1900s, we see evidence that the halfcrown was an unpopular denomination in some quarters, denounced as "ungainly" by merchants and businesses and not in keeping with the decimal currency concept the Australian government had originally hoped to introduce - we had decided back in 1901 that we wanted a new fully decimal currency, but the Colonial Office back in London nixed that idea, just like they nixed our idea for the design of the coins to feature a map of Australia. See this Adelaide Advertiser article from August 1909, for example, or this shorter one from September 1908.

Imperial halfcrowns continued to circulate here until all British silver coins were officially withdrawn and sent back where they came from after Britain debased their coinage in 1920.

WillieBoyd2

Sapyx has answered the question.

Thank you.

ProofArtworkonCircs

I was dead wrong about South Africa. They had both florins and haf crowns. I never should have listened to that South African chap.
However, his sister was spot on when she told me Queen Elizabeth was 2 months pregnant.