As originally published in Australasian Coin and Banknote Magazine in May 2022. What Went Wrong -error coins that escaped the Mint What we have to show this month is a very unique character, the 2016 ‘Alien’ five cent (see Figure…

One of the great features of our new blogging engine is the ability to have slideshows like the one above. This one shows four great errors of what is the “ugly duckling” of decimal coins, the $2 coin. The humble…

Do you see what I see? The eagle eyed collector will see parts of the design of the two dollar coin struck on, what, a five cent planchet? That’s correct, this coin is a $2 coin, it’s been through the…

In 2012 a new Australian 50 cent coin variety was discovered by coin noodlers*. This variety is an Upset Coin Error which means that the obverse and reverse dies were not aligned correctly when the coins were struck. Normally Australian…

The market for quality high grade Australian decimal error coins is certainly heating up right now with strong results seen across the board at public auction and auction sites such as eBay. All coins shown or mentioned in this article…

Interestingly termed, an “Indent” error coin occurs when 2 planchets are accidentally fed into the collar at once. Consequently the dies will press the coin blanks together creating a partial blank on one side. This may fully or only partially…

This 1952a Australian penny was struck in Perth but there was a press malfunction during it’s minting. The coin struck prior to this coin had not exited the press completely before the new blank fell into place and was struck.This…

A split planchet coin error occurs when there is a weakness or lamination defect in the metal blank. During the preparation of the planchet strip foreign materials such as gas, dirt or grease may become trapped below the metal surface.…

Have you ever seen a die cap, bottle cap or bottle top coin error? They are one of the rarest coin errors typically because such an error should never leave the manufacturing mint. This Australian 5c bottle cap error started…