"FANTASTIC STORY"

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 183, 4 August 1936, Page 17

"FANTASTIC STORY"

GOLD IN PENNIES. "COPPERS" MADE IN 1914ROYAL MINT TOO CAREFUL. "A fantastic and ridiculous story" was the description applied in Wellington by Mr. H. R. Ford at a recent meeting of the New Zealand Numismatic Society to the persistent canard that pennies bearing the date 1914 are of a high value because of supposedly high gold content. Mr. Ford was lecturing on "The Identification and Valuation of Coins." "The idea of the high gold content of the 1914 pennies," he said, "has arisen from the fiction that cither a gold ingot or a crucible of gold fell into a pot of molten bronze at the Royal Mint, and the Royal Mint was calling in the pennies made therefrom to recover the lost gold. "A more fantastic and ridiculous story of the Royal Mint could hardly be imagined, as it is a highly organised factory turning out metal articles which happen to be coins that we use as a medium of exchange. To us who are conversant with factory organisation and know the necessary checking of raw materials —precious metals and base metals—issued to factory staffs, and the subsequent checking and viewing of the finished products, especially in the production of articles of gold and silver where every scrap of metal; —the scissel cuttings, the floor sweepings and the residue from the wash-hands—is col-

lected and treated to recover the utmost particle of gold and silver as. is done in the workshops of the working jewellers and jewellery manufacturers throughout the world; to us it is unthinkable that such a mishap could ever occur at the Royal Mint because the gold and silver are melted in a different department from the bronze, to keep the scrap residues of the precious metals separate from the base. "Worth £7 Apiece!" "One story states that the 1914 pennies are worth over £7 apiece," said Mr. Ford. "Now, a bronze penny in mint state weighs six-twentieths of an ounce, and if it were of solid gold throughout and weighed six pennyweights, then at the present price 'of gold it would be worth only £2, and actually it would be much thinner than a bronze penny, because of the greater atomic weight of gold. "The only copper coins of Great Britain between the year 1700 and the present time that are worth something more than their face .value are the copper 'cartwheel' penny and twopenny pieces of George 111. of 1797. They can be purchased in London for 2/ to 5/, according to condition. No collector in his sane senses would dream of giving £7 to £9 (as stated recently) for a copper penny of 1860, neither would he give a similar sun-, for a bronze penny of 1914, no matter how scarce those coins might be, when a silver tetradraelini of Ptolemy I. of Egypt, with one of the most beautifully executed portraits of a ruler who lived over 2200 years ago, can be purchased in London to-day for 15/.

"Therefore the whole story of the mishap at the Royal Mint and the subsclent deductions can be dismissed as being unworthy of any serious thought," concluded Mr. Ford.