Australian Silver Coins

For a fascinating start or addition to your coin collection, I reckon you can't go past Australian silver coins. Coin collecting is one of the most multi-faceted hobbies I have ever come across. For the history buff, you can discover so much by learning the story surrounding a particular coin or set of coins:

• Why was the coin minted?
• What was the social climate like at the time?
• What about the economic climate?
• What where manufacturing and minting processes like at the time?
• Why where the chosen materials used?
• What about the design?
• Who might have used the coins?
• Does the coin commemorate anything special?

Those purely interested in the collecting process have a multitude of options to chose from:

• Eras
• Denominations
• Composition
• Series
• Years
• Error coins

And then of course there are those that choose to collect coins for their investment value. Over the years, a carefully built coin collection has shown itself to be a pretty safe bet as far as building value goes.

Australian silver coins fit the bill in every one of these categories, even though the Australian currency doesn't have a relatively long history. In 1788 the First Fleet sailed into Botany Bay and brought with it a limited supply of currency from England. It seems there wasn't a lot of forethought given to how the new colony would conduct business, because the amount of money initially sent over turned out to be totally inadequate and many of the first settlers began to use rum and tobacco for their commercial transactions!

The first coin "minted" specifically for Australia was the silver holey dollar. It was a repurposed Spanish dollar with the centre punched out to form two new coins. From those inauspicious beginnings, Australian silver coins became a significant part of the new Australian currency when it was introduced in 1910 - the threepence, sixpence, shilling and florin were all minted in silver.

Then, in 1966, came the introduction of decimal currency. The first 50 cent pieces were minted in silver. However, with the price of silver increasing, the value of the metal in the coin was worth more than the coin itself. So from 1967 onwards all Australian silver coloured coins intended for circulation have been produced from a combination of copper and nickel.

That did not mean the end of Australian silver coins though. Proof, commemorative and series coins are still produced each year in silver.