Australia added a crown to its coin series in 1937—in its day sometimes called a “Casey’s Cartwheel” (for Treasurer R. G. Casey, who had lobbied so hard for the coin). They were originally issued as commemoratives of George VI’s coronation in 1937, although they had initially been authorized as commemoratives of Edward VIII’s coronation. It has often been said, however, that their meaningfulness was more than a little diluted by the issue—the very next year—of these 1-crown pieces dated 1938.
And so the question…why does the 1938 crown exist? One answer I’ve read is that 1938 was simply the next date in what was intended to be the career of a circulation coin. If so, then the trial period was certainly an abbreviated one. And the follow-on mintage was so very small; just 102,000 in 1938, compared to 1,008,000 in 1937.
But I wonder. 1938...why not a small coinage of crowns for the Sesquicentennial of Australia? I’ve read that they held big celebrations in 1938 commemorating the century-and-a-half since the first settlement of 1788. So maybe this 1938 crown is somehow related?
Or perhaps even—but this is a stretch—the sesquicentennial accidentally short-circuited what (as above) was an official experiment to see if an Australian crown coin would circulate. That is, the 1938 crown would not have been saved as Coronation commems (like the ’37 crowns), but were the 1938 crowns perhaps saved instead as Sesquicentennial commemoratives, and the results of the experiment with a circulating 1-crown coin skewed thereby?
v.
