NEW HALF-CROWNS

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 55, 28 November 1933, Page 8

NEW HALF-CROWNS

Durability a Feature QUARTERNARY ALLOY Manufacturing Obstacles The newly-designed half-crowns from the Royal Mint 'which arrived at Wellington by the Rangltane last week are going rapidly into circulation, and are already to be met with frequently. The sharpness of the design and exquisite finish of the workmanship is exciting favourable comment, but on account of the comparative lightness of the coin the question of its durability has been raised. As a matter of fact, there is no ground for anxiety on that score. The same alloy has been thoroughly tested by the Royal Mint, and durability is one of its special features. The quarternary alloy from which all the neiv New Zealand silver coins are being njade has now been in use for British coins for some five or six years past. It is a special alloy, which, from a technical point of view, is extremely difficult to manufacture. So great are the obstacles in the way that the Royal Mint is the only mint in the world that has carried through the process with success. The only other two mints to make the attempt have been those at Paris and at Budapest, and In each case so much trouble was experienced that neither mint has any intention of repeating the attempt. Britain was first faced with the necessity of altering the content of its silver coinage about 1922, when on account of the appreciation of silver the coins were actually containing more of the metal than their face value. The mint then adopted a straight silver-copper mixture, in which these two metals were combined in equal parts. It was found, however, that after these coins had been in circulation for four or five years they began to develop a coppery appearance and they had to be discarded. It was then that the quarternary alloy was successfully adopted, and it has been thoroughly tested out with most satisfactory results. It makes use of only 506 parts of fine silver out of 1000, as against 900 parts in the Australian coins that have been in use here and that are now being replaced. This, of course, represents a great saving to the country, and this is one of the respects in which local tenderers could not hope to compete with the Royal Mint, for they could not handle the quarternary alloy. The whole of the new Coins of all denominations are expected to reach the Dominion before March 31.