A very interesting session was enjoyed at our May meeting where we had five members attending, including Alex Adkins who was briefly back in town.

Coins are a fascinating hobby because of their uniqueness, history, availability both in circulation and to purchase and the ability to trade with others to build coin sets and sequences.
Our general format is along the lines of “show and tell” where members will bring along a favourite coin from their collection and speak to its background and its collectability, or a latest acquisition or simply seek input from others knowledge.

David presented a full set of pre-decimal pennies from 1911 to 1965. We all looked and saw that rare 1930 penny (only approx.1200 ever minted) and the 1937 penny that is rare because only a small number were “minted” with King Edward Eighth head before he abdicated to King George Sixth. But alas while all the coins presented where the real thing, 1930 and 1937 pennies were not genuine but cleverly minted fakes.

Gary presented an 1870 English shilling which he discovered lying on a rural roadway in the Rutherglen area and some early 19th century English coins found at the original house site of his rural property while prospecting with a metal detector. He also displayed a complete date sequence of Australian pre-decimal threepences.

Alex showed some recent purchases from Australia Post including the newly released $1 alphabet coin set. Australia Post is an agent for the Royal Australian Mint (RAM) and our own Benalla PO has for display and sale, new RAM coin releases.

Doug presented his almost complete collection of $2 coloured coins and spoke of the hard-to-get 2012 Remembrance Day Poppy. He purchased a Collectors Folder off the web and noted that each coin slot described the coins in date sequence with photos which aided collection.

Rounding out the meeting David gave a detailed summary of Australian Coin History dating from 1788 when the Indigenous population used a barter trading system to  1813 when Spanish Dollar was introduced with the centre punched out to create “The Dump” and double the coinage in circulation: to the introduction of the first Australian minted coins in 1911: to the opening of the Royal Australian Mint in 1965: to the introduction of decimal currency in 1966: to replacing the $1 note with a coin in 1984 and the $2 note in 1988: the withdrawal of one and two cent coins in 1992 and the release of the first coloured coin in 2012.

At our next meeting we are hoping to run a YouTube video on coin collecting and what to look out as you “noodle” through your general change.

We look forward to more members joining us on the third Monday of the month 10.00am to noon at the Senior Citizens rooms.
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Gary Edwards

The Coin Collectors Group is up and going. Our previous convenor Alex Atkins, and wife Annette, have shifted to Echuca and Alex has handed the reins to Doug Smith.  Doug convened the March meeting on our return to the U3A Meeting Room, with five members attending. The recent April meeting was also attended by five members although two of these members were not present at the March meeting.  Our numbers are slowly creeping back to pre-COVID levels of 10 to 15 members.

With Doug away on a planned break with family to Gippsland in April, Gary Edwards convened the April Meeting.  Members presented selections from their coin collections. A very interesting cross section of Australian pre decimal and decimal coinage was exhibited, as well as coins from overseas countries. Discussions included the ways in which coins can be catalogued and displayed and the values of coins, including coins with varieties and blemishes.  Interesting stories of how coins were procured/discovered were told and sets of specimen coins displayed.

If you have coins, either as a serious collector or as someone with a cache of old or foreign coins who wants to know more about them, then feel free to come along to share your knowledge or to find out more about those coins.

The Coin Collectors Group meets on the 3rd Monday from 10am to 12noon in the U3A Meeting Room.


Gary Edwards