The 1947 Florin is one the easiest dates to acquire in the George VI series due to the extremely high
mintage
of 39 million coins - the largest total
mintage
of any year in the entire Florin series. Despite the high
mintage, in mint-state, the 1944-S and
1946 remains more common. The piece was produced at the Melbourne Mint
before being shipped by rail to the various Commonwealth Bank branches where they were rolled. This caused even coins from
original bank rolls to be plagued with bag-marks making high mint-state grades rare. Despite this, the 1947 Florin sells
at a similar price to the much more common 1946 Florin and often cheaper than the even more common 1944-S making it seem
somewhat undervalued. Due to the abundance of mint-state examples from the numerous bankrolls that have surfaced, circulated
1947 florins are worth very little, usually only selling for bullion value. The Melbourne
Mint also produced a proof strike in 1947.
From 1946 the silver content in the Australian Florin series was reduced from 92.5 percent to 50 percent. It seems like
that the high
mintage
of 1947 was partly due to the large number of 92.5% silver coins that were being removed from circulation for melting.
During WW2 the United States assisted with the production of Australian coins - including the Florin. The coins that were
produced were not directly purchased by Australia but were instead part of a lend-lease program. At the conclusion of the
war, Australia began to repay the US with silver that was collected from across Australia and melted down at the Melbourne
Mint. In 1948 the Hobart Mercury newspaper reported that 14,000 pounds
of old silver coins had been collected in Hobart and were airlifted to Melbourne to be melted and sent to the United States.
(The Mercury, 1948)
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