1 Cent - Elizabeth II 2nd Portrait

Australia's decimal conversion on 14 February 1966 — "Decimal Day" — required the Royal Australian Mint to produce coins in volumes that dwarfed anything previously attempted domestically. The one-cent piece was never popular; retailers and the public found it cumbersome almost immediately, and pressure to abolish it began well before the denomination was finally withdrawn from circulation in 1992. By the final years of this series, mintage figures had dropped sharply as the Reserve Bank of Australia quietly acknowledged the coin's practical uselessness.