INTRODUCTION

Bronze Pennies
I was at primary school when decimalisation began in 1971 and the outgoing imperial currency seemed a sad loss, and something which in my mind needed to be somehow preserved. We children at that time were always told to check our change for that elusive 1933 penny which was out there somewhere and we read newspaper reports around that time of a 1933 penny selling for over £8000, which was more than the average house price back then! (A recent 1933 penny sold for £150,000 so it is still valued at about the price of an average home!)

It was only one step from there for a young child to keep a collection of the different dates of pennies. As a natural collector of things, I experienced the buzz of finding a rare date in my change, and this developed eventually into a weekly Saturday trip into the Merrion Centre in Leeds (two buses required, which was quite an adventure for an 11 year old, even at that time) where they had two coin stalls with new stock in every week that was worth rummaging around for this or that special year, or variation.

Some people collect many different types of coins, and even among penny collectors some prefer the old, large copper pennies (1797 – 1860), whilst others prefer to collect the shiny “proof” pennies, or even the rare “pattern” pennies, but for me it was all about specialising in the bronze circulation pennies (1860 – 1967). As that young boy in 1971, looking at and fingering through that handful of change from the sweetie shop, to hold in my hand an 1860 penny which was over 100 years old, and imagining its journey through time was almost a religious experience – imagining right back to some Victorian housewife buying a loaf of bread at the bakery with it……..and getting change back from it too! Then passed amongst soldiers in the first world war, and second world war, and even through to the flower-power hippie generation of the 60s – what tales each and every penny could tell of its life.

My collection may have grown into possibly the best circulation penny collection in the world. It is sad that the collection has to be stored in a bank vault these days because of its high value but I display it online now for both aspiring and established collectors to look at. There is a tendency these days to include dates which are overstruck or pennies with various faults – these are not technically true variations in my opinion, but I include many of them anyway. I hope you enjoy it……….

KB (I can be contacted at celtina131@aol.com)


Notes:

Although pennies before 1860 are called copper pennies, and after 1860 they became bronze pennies, it is interesting to note that the actual composition from 1860 was 95% copper, 4% tin and 1% zinc………..though by the end in 1967 this had changed to 97% copper, 0.5% tin and 2.5% zinc.

Included with each year is the cataloguing according to Freeman (for example the first coin from 1860 = F1 and the final coin from 1967 = F257). Where you find a gap in my collection, it is usually due to his catalogue also including “proof coins” such as F2 which is actually a gold penny proof and not part of any circulation collection.

The next references are a number and a letter (eg 1+A) and this is a different method of cataloguing used by Spink. The number refers to the obverse side of the penny (ie the face side) whilst the letter refers to the reverse side of the penny (ie the date side). So for example, the 1860 pennies have 6 different types of obverse (1 to 6) and 6 different types of reverse (A to F) with many combinations of varieties therefore, but other years such as 1967 have only one variety (3+J). This gets even more complicated when some new variations are later discovered…….so for example in 1860 we have a 1*+A as well as a 1+A, but these do not occur often.

The circulation number is the total number of pennies minted – so for example in 1878 there were 2,764,470 pennies minted. A high percentage of these totals are either lost or melted down over the years. Thus, the total remaining for 1878 is estimated at only 25,000. The remainder no longer exist – in other words, only about 1% of the pennies minted are still around and 99% have gone. Moreover, no accurate records are kept as to how this total circulation figure is divided between the different varieties, so we have to make estimates. For example, the F1 penny (1860 1+A) is estimated at a total circulation of only around 1500 out of the 5 million+ total so it is given an R12 value, which is a guide to its rarity (C20 being the most common – over 100 million, and R20 being the scarcest being unique).

As I said, my collection is primarily CIRCULATION PENNIES, and one must be careful about this. For example, an Edward VIII penny from 1937 was sold recently in a Spink auction for £133,000 in 2019. However, this was actually a “pattern penny” which is basically a “trial design” and not an actual penny. I hope that the person who paid such a grand sum of money for that coin was aware of this!!


The only coin missing from my collection is:

F19 (1861 2+F) – it is rated as R20 which means it is currently unique (but hopefully a second one will appear one day, or the current owner will sell it to me……) 

(Update Nov 2024 - i have now secured this penny and also the 1954 unique penny. I believe that my bronze collection is now not only the finest in the world but also better and more thorough than the ones at the British Museum and Royal Mint Museum. The only pity is that it is stored in a bank vault and not available for public display - but at least this website will hopefully be of interest to many)

(Note - I am also missing F189 (1920 3+B), also rated R20 - but here the only known specimen was made for monarchy and is now kept at the British Museum. It may have been a “pattern”, or design, penny rather than a circulation penny and will never become available anyway.)

Any other omissions are either proofs or trials or misprints, which I do not recognise as circulation pennies or different designs.