The curious 1886 Victorian Farthing

[Coin_Hunter]

Regarding the 1886 Farthing I am rather intrigued by this as I have an interest in this genre of coins and was looking in that splendid book "Collectors' Coins GB 2007" for the 1886 Farthing and found that, although the valuation of 'fine' graded copies was only £1 as are a lot of the others from around that time, there was a massive hike in value for coins in the VF, EF etc.. conditions...

Although this could be put down to production figures of this particular coin this is what puzzled me: the figures for production for the year 1886 are actually higher for that particular year being 7,767,790 as against 1.1 to 5.8 million for years in the surrounding area of say 1883 to 1891.

What could the explanation be?!

Is this a book error or could it be the well-known discrepancy between mintage figures for a particular year and numbers of coins dated in a particular year?

Thanks in advance,

perplexedly,

CoinHunter

[Chris Perkins]

The figures are thought to be correct but are of the number of coins made that year, not the number dated that year. As clarified under 'Mintage Figures' on page 4.

[Coin_Hunter]

Ahh so it was in fact due to there having been many minted in that year but not of the date - that's what conclusion I did draw but I just wanted to clarify this...