A reader came into the newspaper office with a 1900 sixpence she had found in her small change, thinking it somewhat remarkable. I don’t think it’s amazing at all, but worthy of a blog post.

I don’t handle much change these days except one and two dollar coins. When I was a child these were banknotes. The one and two-cent coins of my youth no longer exist.

Decimal currency was introduced to Australia in 1966. Pounds, shillings and pence ceased to be legal tender in February 1967, a month after I was born.

It was common when I was young to find sixpences and shillings in the change. A sixpence was the same shape and color as a five-cent piece and a shilling the same as 10 cents.

Ten cents was a lot of money then. I remember getting a shilling in change for selling raffle tickets and agonising over keeping it for my collection. I simply couldn’t afford to substitute 10 cents for the coin!

It was the late 1970s when I last saw a pre-decimal coin in my change. New Zealand coins were always common, especially 20-cent pieces. They were the same size and color, with the same image of the Queen. Instead of a platypus their coin had a kiwi.

Coins from Fiji and the United Kingdom sometimes surfaced as well. Foreign currency in circulation is rare these days, possibly because the 50 cent, one dollar and two-dollar coins are distinctive.

Back to the 1900 sixpence, Australia used British currency in the years immediately before and after becoming a nation.

In fact it was 1910, nine years after Federation, that we produced our own coins, albeit at the Royal Mint in London.

That was the final year of Edward VII’s reign. He died on May 6, 1910 just after three million Australian coins were minted bearing his effigy. A badly worn 1910 sixpence has pride of place in my collection, along with an 1861 penny I dug up near the railway line in Traralgon.

The appearance of a 1900 sixpence in circulation today is probably the result of theft or someone clearing out their cupboard and mixing old coins with new.