3 Pence - George V

British West Africa's silver threepence series was struck at multiple mints — London, Pretoria, and on occasion Heaton's Birmingham facility — with mint marks often the only means of distinguishing them. The 1920 issues were produced during the currency board's postwar transition, when demand for small-denomination silver across Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia was pressing enough to require multiple striking facilities simultaneously.

The .500 fineness adopted for this type represented a deliberate reduction from the earlier .925 standard, matching the contemporaneous debasement applied across British colonial coinage as silver prices spiked following World War I.