2016-05-21 Sat

The Brisbane ANDA Money Expo, which is scheduled for the weekend at the Brisbane Table Tennis Centre at Windsor, will star one of Australia’s oldest coin –the Holey Dollar. The 200-year old coin is worth more than half a million bucks and is now with a private collector in Brisbane named Belinda Downie. Only 300 such coins exist in the world today, out of which 100 are showcased in museums across the globe while private collectors own the rest. This particular one is extremely rare and in near-perfect condition. The coin fetched Miss Belinda an impressive $550,000 last year.

The coins which are generally called silver dollars were imported from Spain and Mexico and were brought over by the New South Wales governor Lachlan Macquarie who defaced it by making a hole in it. The 1813 Holey Dollar was made by re-stamping the outer ring around the inner circular edge. The Dump was worth 15 pence and the Holey Dollar that was minted had an original value of five shillings.

The colony in Australia depended largely on imports from Great Britain and any kind of money was used for transactions. The reason why he minted these coins was because he wanted them to be circulated within the colony exclusively.