What is The Australian Coin Collecting Blog (australian-coins.com)?

Updated

The Australian Coin Collecting Blog is a hobbyist reference site for collectors of Australian decimal coins. It publishes guides to circulating coin series, year-by-year issue and mintage lists, and detailed write-ups of error and mis-strike coins. It is most useful if you collect Australian coins and want background reading on what was minted, when, and how certain errors came to exist — it is not a dealer storefront or a price guide.

What the site covers

The navigation and article structure show three main content areas:

  • Coin series guides — a complete guide to Australian 1 dollar coins, a guide to circulating Australian 2 dollar coins, and a section on the Australian 50 cent coin.
  • Issues and mintages by year — separate pages for 1 dollar coin issues and mintages spanning 1984–1990, 1991–1995, 1996–1998, 1999–2000, 2001, 2002–2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.
  • Errors and mis-strikes — a dedicated section, plus articles such as the one on an Australia 1976 silver proof one cent wrong planchet error, and a piece on identity discs as forget-me-not tokens.

There are also pages for Australian PNCs (philatelic numismatic covers), plus Contact Us and About Us.

Who it is for

The content assumes you already know the basics of Australian decimal coinage and want to go deeper — for example, understanding why a 1976 proof one cent struck on a sterling silver planchet is unusual, given that the first Australian sterling silver decimal coins were not struck until 1982. If you are new to collecting, the year-by-year mintage pages are the most accessible entry point; the error articles are written for readers comfortable with terms like planchet, proof, and mis-strike.

How the error articles work

The 1976 wrong planchet article is a useful example of the site's approach. It walks through:

  1. What a wrong planchet error is — a coin struck on a blank intended for another coin, medal, or token.
  2. Identifying the specific coin — a proof 1976 one cent on a silver planchet, graded PCGS PR61CAM, described as one of only two or three known of its type.
  3. How it may have happened — the article points to the Royal Australian Mint producing coins, tokens, and medals for other countries in most years since it opened in 1965, and cites the RAM annual report for 1976–1977 as evidence.
  4. Open questions — sections titled "Are Mint Sport coins Errors?" and "Is There One Other Possibility?" show the author speculating rather than asserting a single conclusion.

That structure — describe the coin, explain the mechanism, then flag what remains uncertain — is the pattern to expect across the error content.

Practical notes

  • The site offers a newsletter signup at australian-coins.com/subscribe-australian-coin-collecting-blog-newsletter/ if you want new articles delivered.
  • The site is English-language and aimed at the Australian market.
  • Nothing in the available material indicates a price guide, a shop, or a login-gated archive, so treat it as a reading and reference resource rather than a valuation tool.

If your goal is to look up what a given year's 1 dollar coin issues and mintages were, or to read a careful account of a specific Australian error coin, this site is built for exactly that.