New Releases from the Royal Australian Mint and a Coin Designer Bungle

July 1, 2011


Many new releases from the Royal Australian Mint today with the issue of the latest Mint Issue Magazine for July 2011. The Census $1, Major Mitchell Cockatoo $1, Kingfisher $1 and the Dame Joan Sutherland $1 just to name a few.


WP initials indicating Wojciech Pietranik

Now of particular interest regarding this latest issue in the Inspirational Australians series is the Dame Joan Sutherland coin. We reported here on the Australian Coin Collecting Blog that the coin was designed by RAM designer Wojciech Pietranik. We made this assumption because of the designers initials on the reverse of the coin -quite an obvious assumption to make (see above). The Mint website and media associated with this release states that the Dame Joan Sutherland coin is designed by Vladimir Gottwald. You can see in our image below that Gottwald's designing initial is a stylised "G" and not the WP we see on the Dame Joan coin. We are yet to see the packaging of this coin. Is it that there are error cards or is it a simple mistake in online description?


WP Wojciech Pietranik (left), Incuse G Vladimir Gottwald (centre), CG Caitlin Goodall (right)

edit July 3rd: It appears the packaging of this coin does correctly state Wojciech Pietranik as the coin designer.


Posted by harrisk at July 1, 2011 2:23 PM
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