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6 Pence - George VI
| Issuer | Commonwealth of Australia |
|---|---|
| Year | 1938-1945 |
| Type | Standard circulation coin |
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| Obverse description | Bare-headed left-facing effigy of King George VI, engraved by Thomas Humphrey Paget, with the designer's initials 'HP' visible below the truncation of the bust. The portrait is rendered in a restrained, classical style with fine detail to the hair and facial features. The surrounding legend reads GEORGIVS VI D:G:BR:OMN:REX F:D:IND:IMP, arranged continuously around the coin from lower left to lower right, separated by colons. The field is smooth and unadorned, and the coin is bordered by a fine milled rim. |
|---|---|
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| Obverse lettering | GEORGIVS VI D:G:BR:OMN:REX F:D:IND:IMP. HP (Translation: George VI by the Grace of God, King of all the British territories, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India) |
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| Additional information |
Australia's wartime sixpences present a quiet documentation problem: the Royal Australian Mint did not yet exist, so all silver coinage was struck at the Royal Mint's Melbourne and Sydney branches, both operating under pressures of wartime metal allocation. In 1942 and 1943, with Japanese forces threatening the Pacific, the Australian government quietly reviewed whether silver coinage should be debased or suspended entirely — a decision ultimately deferred until the postwar period, when the .925 standard was finally abandoned in 1946.
The 1945 issue closed out this standard for good. Collectors should note that the Melbourne and Sydney branch mint marks carry meaningfully different mintage figures across these years.