50 years since the introduction of Australian dollars and cents

[Dauphin]

Interesting article about $100 notes:

http://www.news.com.au/finance/econo...d51b394709b666

Also, check down the bottom... a Zimbabwe $100,000,000,000,000 dollar note, see how much it converts into AUD$!

[Iggle Piggle]

Originally Posted by bobthebilda

...You can go thru your pockets now, and find a coin made from 1966 to 1970. Not only do you get the coin at face value, but the government is actively destroying these coins as they go thru the banking system. They get rarer and rarer each year.

8 yo daughter likes to look at what year her coins were made and gets excited if she finds a 1966 coin as she knows that is as old as our decimal currency gets.

She was super excited to get a 1966 20 cent piece in her change from the tuck shop the other day - unfortunately it wasn't one of the rare 1966 20s that has the wavy base on the 2 (worth about $500 these days), but she is keeping it anyway as she now has one of each coin from '66.

[castellan]

Originally Posted by Syndrome

Yes I can picture it: "That'll be 3 dingos and 25 wombats please".

I wonder what that big fella $100 note would be, an Aboriginal.

No that would not be Politicly Correct nowadays to say, that will be 5 Abos 3 dingos and 25 wombats please.

It may of truly been something like that way, before that fella Cook came hear ay.

[xtremerus]

And of course the original 50cent was round and had silver in it.
They are worth more now just for the silver content.

[Sprintey]

Originally Posted by yanknbank

I can still remember feeling a little disappointed at there being no more thrupenny bits in the plum puddings at Christmas time. Scarred me for life!

Hahaha, we can still do that but have to warn the kids first so they don't eat them. Early thrupenny was 92.5% silver, so you just know that your pudding will remain bacteria free for a while longer than it should!

For Syndrome, etc, when decimal first introduced the round 50c was 50% silver, the rest were chaff - rumour had it that as the silver weight of the coin > its face value the Japanese bought an immense amount of them and melted them down for the arbitrage value.

From memory as well, imperial coin
UK 92.5% silver until 1918 (Britain bankrupt from WW1, devalues)
Australia: 92.5% silver until 1945 (bankrupt from WW2, devalues)

so you have this unique situation where, for example, a British and dominion half crown in the interwar period was accepted as same value, but the dominion coin was worth nearly twice as much. Any numismatists feel free to correct me

'Casey's Cartwheel' ftw