Between 1825 and 1910 (85 years) British currency was used as the local Australian currency. Much was imported yet also a lot was minted here in Australia. Does anyone know much about the coins of this period? For instance, I know that the sovereigns were minted in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth and each had a mint mark on them. Was the same true for the lower denominations? There must have been millions of pounds worth of currency minted through the period. Where did it all go? How can it be identified as coming from here? Interested to hear what you guys know. Cheers.
I second that question, I wonder if it went into general circulation or t ended up as bullion in the imperial coffers? Great to hear from anyone with any knowledge on this.
Only gold was minted in Australia, no silver UK coins were minted here. As such there are no Australian mintmarks on UK silver coins, in fact we didnt start minting silver coins until 1916, the first five years of commonwealth silver was still minted in the UK and shipped to Australia.
bja is quite correct, no silver coinage struck here for general circulation until 1916. There were some silver tokens and things in the 19th century but they don't really count.
found a few of the old pommy silver pre 1910 coins in the dirt that would account for 0.0000000001% of it not sure where the rest went oldest one I think 1820's probably still some more out there somewhere !
Copper & Silver coins were proposed to be minted at Melbourne in the 1870s but this didn't go through until 1911 & 1910 respectively.
Interesting. I still wonder where the coins went to. Also, I have read a few sources saying that copper and silver were struck here, but have read others that say they weren't. Were the Melbourne, Sydney and Perth mints only set up to mint gold coins and print paper currency?
