Important British and World Coins

Elizabeth II (1952-, Trial Currency coins, series 2, comprising Fifty Pence, cupro-nickel, edge plain, 32mm, 16.17g/12h; Twenty Pence, cupro-nickel, edge plain, 25mm, 6.41g/12h; Ten Pence, yellow alloy, edge grained, 28mm, 11.21g/12h; Five Pence, yellow alloy, edge grained, 23.5mm, 5.59g/12h; Two Pence, yellow alloy, edge grained, 18mm, 2.23g/12h; Penny, bronze, edge plain, 21.5mm, 4.42g/12h; Quarter-Penny, aluminium, edge plain, 20mm, 1.16g/12h, all with obvs. Tower Mint logo, revs. numerical mark of value [7]. All toned and most with light handling marks, otherwise practically as struck, of the highest rarity (£500-700)

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Joanna Tansley Collection of Patterns, Proofs and Coining Trials.

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Collection

Provenance:
Professor John Rimington, 1963
Spink Auction 124, 18-19 November 1997, lot 2264.

Although the Committee was much influenced by the economy of having a two-tier system of coinage denominations (see the previous lot), the members also foresaw an eventual need to go to three tiers if significant inflation occurred. A scenario which would see the eventual disappearance from circulation of the sixpence was the genesis of the idea behind the pieces in series 2 and 3, which replace the copper 2p with a coin in direct weight-value relation to the 5p, yielding an elegant three-tier solution and using yellow alloy for the intermediate tier. Almost certainly the Committee would have recommended a three-tier solution had the pace of inflation prior to decimalisation been foreseen and it seems very likely that it would have formed the present coinage, but the elegance of such a system would have been undermined by the eventual need for a one-pound coin. Apparently there was also a type 2 halfpenny made, like the penny in bronze, but this was absent when these coins were sold in 1997 and it appears to have been lost without trace