THREEPENNY BITS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 174, 16 March 1932, Page 2

THREEPENNY BITS

NEW ZEALAND THE H^ME " OF SMALL SILVER COINS. " COMPTROLLER'S REPORT. Reference to travellers with sacks of.-coins, and to New Zealand being ihe real liome of the threepenny bit,; are made in the report of the DeputyMaster and Comptrpller of the Royal Mint. . The report reveals that no gold coin was issued frora the Mint during t|ae year under review, but 33,000,000 sctvereigns were melted into bars of gold. "Rather more than half- of the tatai overseas small coiri issue pf £244,030 went to New Zealand," the report siates, "to whieh islands, as. we know, so many of our Seottish dompatriots carried with them their virtues and customs to form the great and flourishing Dominion. At home we see that the mueh-maligned threepenny pieces do not reaeh one per cent. of the total." An instance of a curious naevement of coin has reeently arisen as a result of the heavy diseonnt in the Australian exehange, it is added. Apart frojn the cash transactions which are always going on along the shipping routes, it was evident that while Australian currency of all kinds stanjs at a eonsiderable discount in this country, any British s'lver or bronze coinage that might still be remaining in the Commonwealth could be brought to this country and disposed of at its face value. Sacks Full," "Travellers have not been slow t.o take advantage of this anomaly," adda the report, "and many of them have 'actually embarked for home carrying sacks full of British coin with-theih, wh;ch they had gradually collected in Australia for the coming voyage, very often at a eonsiderable premium. "Correspondence with the Australian banks and with the shipping companies shovs that the importation of coin in this manner during the last 12 mciiths must in value reaeh well into six figures. No credence should therefore, be given to the fable of the New Zealander who went on driving round London with such a sackful without finding anyone who was willing to gvie him credit for its contents, until in the end his taxi fare had mounted up to the full equivalent." The deputy-master also refers to the export of .gold to France, and adds: "So far as the gold coinage has been eoncerned, the London Mint has not merely been engaged in consuming its tail, but all its legs and the greater part of its body as well. So far from the increased demand for gold resulting in increased demands for coin, there has been a huge redundancy of gold com, and a steadily increasing demand for bar. "In the year under review, for the first time in history, the Bank of England decided to re-convert sovereigns into bar form. Upwards of £33,000,000 in coin, much of it quite new, was melted here before the end of the year." These bars, it is revealed, were remelted into bars of standard fineness to enable their acceptance by the Bank of France.