Latest Renniks (with hindsight)

I came across a copy of the 1975 ‘Renniks Australian Coin Guide Part 1’ by Dion H. Skinner the other day, which prompted me to consider more closely the latest release, available for a few months now – ‘Renniks Australian Coin & Banknote Values 30^th Edition’, subtitled ‘The Leading Guide for Australian Coin & Banknote Values 1800-2020’ (that sounds a lot better, doesn’t it, but bear in mind marketing was really only in its infancy in the ’70s…).

Silver and Gold Up…

Anyway, the the latest publication’s been on the radar, particularly since the 29^th Edition came out only last year and since then there have been some significant upward moves in precious metals. Thoughts jumped into my head like “I wonder if anything good happened to the value of Aussie florins now that silver has come up to the AUD 30-35 range ? Perhaps this book is keeping track and is right on the money…”

So I finally got a hold of a copy – the bluey green one – and, to be honest, apart from the colour of the cover, I was not really able to see any changes, I mean in the predecimal section and the florins in particular. So that was a little disappointing…but maybe I just haven’t noticed yet..

Bottom Dollar

What I have noticed is that mid to late ’20s and ’30s KGV florins in the bottom VG grade have been given a value below melt. Ok, it’s a book and you can’t expect it to be up to the minute with the spot price, that’s just not possible – however they could have put ‘BV’ for bullion value which is what’s done in the section for sovereigns (incidentally, more than a few sovereigns in EF grade have been given the value AUD 500 which is way under melt…and that information has been like that for quite a few years now…).

Coins, of course, are just the same as a lot of things in that they are only really worth what someone is willing to pay for them. Even so, you would think that the absolute bottom for gold and silver coinage would be its melt value, wouldn’t you ?

So many coins!

To be fair the makers of the book were probably flat out keeping up with the plethora of contemporary coins pumped out into the market by the various mints, even in the short period from May 2019 to June 2020!

In ’75 Mr Skinner ran to 52 pages, compared to the 336 pages now on offer. And there’s been some good work done in the form of alterations and updates as dealt with in an article in the recent ‘Australian Coin & Banknote Magazine’.

You kind of have to have it as one of your many sources of pricing information, especially since McDonald stopped publishing. Having said that and, as useful as Renniks can be, it seems to me to be a bit lacklustre this time around and I reckon I could have got by with the 29^th.

That’s hindsight for you! Oh well,…

Happy Collecting!