The 1924, 1925 and 1926 florins

Characteristics
| 1924 | 1925 | 1926
Designation | F24MS.2A | F25MS.2A | F26MS.2A
Mint | Melbourne Sydney | Melbourne Sydney | Melbourne Sydney
Mint mark | None | None | None
Mintage | 953,000 630,000 1,583,000 | 2,316,000 644,000 2,960,000 | 2,072,250 415,000 2,487,250

1924, 1925 and 1926 were the only years in which florins were struck at the Sydney mint. Dies were supplied from Melbourne and there is no way to distinguish the coins from each mint.

John Dean documents some minor varieties of the '25 and '26 florins, the principal one being a filled or partially-filled obverse die causing the lower horizontal stroke in the F of F.D. to be faint or missing. The other two varieties listed for the 1925 florin only are a dot behind the emu's neck and a hairline die crack through the date. For the 1924 florin, JD lists a variety where the tail of the 4 is missing, again because of a filled die. I have a specimen of the 1925 with the filled F but I don't think any of these varieties is of any importance so I have not bothered to classify them. [Addendum 14/4/2002: I no longer believe that the missing letter/number segments in these varieties is the result of die fill.]

Much more important are the high-grade forgeries of the 1926 florin which Dean describes.

Reverses
| F24MS.2A
| F25MS.2A
| F26MS.2A
| A counterfeit struck at the "Manders Mint" in Sydney. This is an example of the high-grade forgeries mentioned by John Dean. See separate page for more information on these "coins".

As mentioned above, John Dean lists some missing letter and numeral segments as varieties, suggesting that they are the result of die fills. Here are some examples:

"Die fill" varieties
| Date area of a 1924 florin showing missing tail to the crossbar of the 4.
| Part of obverse lengend of a 1925 florin showing the missing cross-stroke of the F. Note the strong fishtailing of the legend.

Now here is a complete picture of that 1924 florin with the missing bit of the 4, along with another enlargement of part of the legend:

1924 florin with broken legend
| The broken lettering (E inONE, Fand L in FLORIN) is very reminiscent of similar faults on the 1928 and 1929 pennies which were probably the result of a damaged working punch. Support for this conjecture is lent by the observation that the faults occur in conjunction with heavily fishtailed lettering, clearly visible here on the E and the R. Now this raises the possibility that the missing tail to the 4 and the missing crossbar to the F are the manifestations of the same type of die distortion rather than simple filling as suggested by Dean.

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Most recent revision: 12th October 2002 - Added illustration of counterfeit 1926 florin.
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