10 Cents - Victoria

Newfoundland's decision to issue its own silver coinage rather than rely on American or Canadian coins was a deliberate one — the colony's fishery economy ran on a complex web of truck credit and company scrip, and locally denominated coin gave merchants a tool to stabilize transactions on their own terms. The Royal Mint in London struck the earliest dates of this series; later issues moved to the Heaton Mint in Birmingham, a distinction that matters for date-by-date mintage analysis.

The 1873 issue is notably scarce relative to others in the run. When Newfoundland finally joined Confederation in 1949, existing stocks of colonial coinage were withdrawn, which accounts for why mid-series dates in problem-free condition are harder to source than the bookend dates.