Rare British Copper & Bronze Coins

Uncirculated with traces of lustre.

Most people associate 1912 with the sinking of the unsinkable ship The Titanic but, as numismatists, we think of it as the year the Royal Mint couldn’t produce all the Pennies they needed and had to get an outside firm to help them. That firm was the Heaton Mint Ltd. in Birmingham. So if you look at a 1912 Penny to the left of the date and slightly upward you may well see an ‘H’ mintmark. This was the mintmark for the Heaton Mint. We have made up this pair of 1912 and 1912 H Pennies in a plastic flip-type envelope, so you can see both pennies at the same time. The coins are in selected circulated condition which, considering that they are now 110 years old, is quite good condition. Show them to your friends and ask if they can spot the difference. If they can’t, then you can show them the ‘H’ and explain what else happened.

The two lowest mintages of the old Penny coin were struck in 1950 and 1951 during the reign of King George VI. In 1950 they only made 240,000 coins that means for £1000 you could have bought all the 1950 Pennies they ever made. Until very recently numismatists have always thought that all the 1950 Pennies were shipped to Bermuda for use after World War II. Now we know that this information is wrong. They were also sent to the Bahamas in the West Indies. Now, these coins were actually used in circulation, because after the War there was a great shortage of small change. The island has a very salty atmosphere and thus the coins are very scarce in the higher grades. The coins on offer are in Very Fine condition and remember they only struck a total of 240,000 1950 Pennies for circulation.

With wonderful colour and fields, slight edge bump.