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One or two light marks on the obverse of the florin stop it being Unc - Reverse is SUPERB

this is my MS65 if it helps at all? I purchased for £175 but that's beside probably the slab speaking

Hi Matt, In Davids book P.58 Minor Varieties No.6 " On the plain type some examples have been found with a raised dot where the H would have been, had the coin been a Heaton mint example."

I see what you mean now, so possibly they fulfilled the quantity required before the year was out and sent back the dies. I have nothing to negate the fact that they just reused the old dies, it really wouldn't surprise me. One question I do have - was the equipment that the Heaton and Norton guys used subpar compared to London's? Because the striking was always a bit hit and miss at the best of times, so if it was down to the dies and not the machinery, surely the dies that were sent back and re-used would produce that 'mulshy' effect that we all know and hate but on the later London minted coins? Generally the strikes on the London coins from those years is a lot better, and to be given the contract in the first place I would have thought that any test pieces they provided to get the job would have been of a much better quality, i.e a problem with the longevity of the die and not the functionality of the machinery.

My thinking is that the punches were held by the RM, so they probably produced the dies and shipped them to Birmingham. As the two sub-contractors would have had a contract to produce a certain amount of coin, once the contract was filled the dies would be returned as there is no way the RM would want them to be kept where someone could produce coins illegally.

It does seem less like a purposeful dot just because of the faintness of it, but as with the other dot flaws they weren't purposeful (as far as anyone knows). There have been suggestions of the dot being used as a test for die wear and instead of the dot appearing faint and growing in size it started off as a prominent dot and slowly became clogged. I've not got David's book to hand but if he does mention this dot variety it would be good to see if anyone else has any examples. Furthermore, if it's in the exact place the H's appear, could it suggest a clogged H along with a lot of wear? I see that your example has a lot of wear too bhx?

Hmmm, looks like die nick as opposed to purposeful dot...

Regarding the 1926 with "pattern" reverse. It seems to be a hybrid of Freeman reverses B and C. It has the slightly larger figure of Britannia as on reverse B but has the border teeth of reverse C which are slightly longer and fewer in number (184 as opposed to 187 on reverse C. I assume that it's an interim stage of development of reverse C. It was sold at London Coin Auction in March 2009 as part of the Roland Harris collection (as a 1926 M.E.) and was previously part of the Andrew Wayne collection sold at LCA in June 2006 (as a 1926 M.E.). Neither collector seems to have recognised the non-standard reverse but it was later brought to my attention by another collector who had spotted the difference from the catalogue. I bought it shortly afterwards at Croydon Coin Auction in May 2010, again as a normal 1926 M.E. penny having recognised it as the Roland Harris coin from the CCA website.