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Elusive 'modern' rarity discovered several years after issuance
By Bret Evans
The 1969 large date 10-cent piece remains one of Canada's numismatic mysteries.
Not discovered till years after it was issued, it remains a scarce coin, with roots that may go back to the silver boom of the 1960s.
One of these great rarities will be on the block this July, when Geoffrey Bell Auctions conducts the RCNA sale.
A key numismatic feature of 1969 was the switch from silver to solid nickel blanks.
The change was done purely for economic reasons. The price of silver was going through the roof and Canadian coins were worth more in the melting pot than they were in consumers' pockets.
The problem had been a worry for the Royal Canadian Mint. In 1960, the bullion value of Canadian coins, then struck in .800 Fine silver, was $1.66 US per troy ounce. As the price of silver approached $1 per ounce, some speculators started to set aside coins.
"Although silver sold for less than $1 per ounce in 1960, production was not keeping up with consumption," says Striking Impressions, an RCM-authorized 1984 book by James Haxby that documents the history of the Mint. "A sudden sharp increase was a distinct possibility. For speculators, this prospect held out the possibility of gain."
In 1964, the price of silver was held at $1.29 US per ounce, the rate at which the United States Treasury was selling silver reserves. That year the RCM, anticipating that the U.S. government would soon let the price float, recommended a switch to cupro-nickel coins before the end of 1966.
The Department of Finance asked for more information. Then master of the Royal Canadian Mint Norval Parker visited the United States Mint and discovered that it was already testing compositions and anticipated a switch from silver coinage in the near future. Even so, it wasn't until 1966 that a committee recommended a switch to nickel coinage, to take place in early 1968.
In 1967, things got worse for the RCM. Having produced enough base-metal coins to replace its silver coinage, the United States government took the cap off the price of silver. The price quickly jumped from $1.30 US an ounce to $2.17.
In Canada, the RCM stopped production of silver dollars and 50-cent pieces, and dropped the purity of other coins from 80 to 50 per cent silver.
As silver rose to $2.56 US an ounce, even these coins became unprofitable.
In 1968, nickel coins were introduced. However, the new composition was harder than silver, and dies were not standing up very well.
"The dramatic rise in die use resulting from the greater hardness of nickel compared to silver was going to be difficult enough to accept," Striking Impressions says.
Coin hoarding during the transition had reached the point that the RCM couldn't keep up with demand for coins and had to take an unprecedented step. In 1968, the Mint placed an order for 85 million 10-cent pieces with the United States Mint, which produced the coins in Philadelphia. The U.S.-made coins, which amount to almost half the mintage for that year, can be spotted by the flat bottoms on the edge reeding, compared with the v-shaped bottoms on Canadian-made coins.
That year, the RCM issued more than 240 million 10-cent pieces, including silver and Philadelphia strikes, a number substantially more than even 1967 (62 million) or 1966 (34 million) and a huge leap over 10 years before. In 1958, 16 million 10-cent coins were produced. It would be more than another decade until a similar mintage was ordered. In 1969, the RCM struck 236 million 10-cent pieces.
Perhaps it was the increased demand for dies to strike on nickel, or the struggle to meet demand, but shortly after the production of 1969-dated 10-cent pieces began, RCM officials noticed that the master matrix had deteriorated to the point that a new one was needed.
The new master matrix, used for almost all 1969 10-cent coins, had both a smaller date and a smaller image of the Bluenose.
At this time, fewer than 20 examples of the original large date variety are known to exist.
Even so, the variety was not discovered for several years, did not appear in the Charlton catalogue until the mid-1970s, and first appeared in Canadian Coin News Trends some 20 years later.
June 8 to June 21, 2010 issue of Canadian Coin News
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