Brit Tip #3

Where is the mintmark on my bronze coin?

The Ralph Heaton Mint had been manufacturing a number of the bronze issues right from the start in 1860-1861, under contract from the Royal Mint. These coins, pennies and farthings, had no mintmark to identify them as Heaton coins. Another contract for Heaton enabled them to manufacture issues of the penny, halfpenny and farthing in 1874, 1875, 1876 and again in 1881 and 1882. This time, an “H” mintmark was placed under the date. Refer to Figure 1 for details.

The Heaton Mint was requested to produce supplemental quantities of 1912 pennies, amounting to 25.8% of production. The Heaton and King’s Norton mints produced supplemental pennies for the dates 1918 and 1919, accounting for only 4.2% of production in 1918 and 4.4% of production in 1919. These mintmarked coins are highly sought after, especially 1918 and 1919. EF or better specimens are extremely scarce, but low grade specimens are pretty easy to locate. You can find the “H” or “KN” to the left of the date, as seen in Figure 2.

Figure 1. Location of mintmark on Victorian bronze coins.	Figure 2. Location of Mintmark on George V pennies.

Posted on CU 7/11/2003