If you haven’t gone through your dad’s coin jar yet you better hop to it, ‘cos a super rare Australian penny from 1930 recently sold for just under $60,000 at auction.
Well, I think I speak for all of us when I say the announcement certainly gives the idiom “a penny for your thoughts” a brand new meaning.
The 92-year-old Australian penny went under the hammer at an online auction on Sunday night and sold for a stonking $59,415 to a Western Australian bidder.
Head of fine art and luxury at Lloyds Auctioneers and Valuers Amanda Benson said the penny fetched such a ‘yuge price due to its low mintage (the act of minting a coin, for those playing along at home).
“They were released just after the stock markets crashed in 1929 and what’s special about those is that they were never actually meant to be released,” she said, per the ABC.
I’d love to say there’s a spicy reason the pennies weren’t meant to be circulated, like they were minted with a penis on them instead of King George V‘s head.
But in reality, the Great Depression was in full swing and the federal government didn’t think Australia needed the piece of copper.
According to numismatist (or coin expert) Bill Mullett, the 1930 Australian penny was also produced during a period of experimentation. Sounds saucy, but all it means is Mints around Australia were testing a few different things out to make better pennies for the rest of the decade.
“Interestingly, the reason they were released was because the Melbourne Mint used a test run of around 1,500 minted coins just to fill the 1931 order,” Benson said.
“They think 3,000 were minted but only 1,500 were used to bolster the 1931 supply.
“All of those 1,500 would have gone into circulation, which means to get any of the 1930 coins that have any sort of reasonable condition is very rare.”
People go so hog wild for the 1930 penny that in 2018, a proof of the coin sold for $1.15 million. Essentially, proof coins are unique early samples, making them a coin collector’s wet dream.
However, your chances of copping a proof coin are pretty slim, seeing as they haven’t been circulated.
From the Royal Mint dropping new coins with King Charles III‘s head on them to the value of $2 coins skyrocketing since Queen Elizabeth II died, it’s truly been a massive few weeks for coin collectors. And now that I know super rare coins are making bank, I might just become one myself.
