I had mentioned recently that I’d ordered a Rhodesian 3 Pence (1 1957 in MS66) to go with the Rhodesian Federation 6 pence my wife gave me for my Birthday.

Shortly thereafter I saw that I seller I’ve used for a lot of my Rhodesian Federation coinage had a 1955 and a 1964 in MS66, so I put in some offers, which they accepted.

After the coins spent a week in the Post Office, after the substitute carrier once again just put a slip of paper in the mailbox and didn’t come to the door, ring the doorbell, or see if I was actually home or not (or claimed to, since this time they didn’t even put the slip in our box and I had to print the tracking information of the website to take with me, but I’m digressing..) I was able to finally get out and get them picked up.

I still need to image the coins, but, as promised in another recent entry, here we get “A Bouquet of Flame Lilies.”

As my prior posts and my naming conventions for these tend to indicate, I tend to view all of these Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland sets as 1 project in multiple parts and I’ve taken advantage of the different short-run denominational sets to break it into smaller, easier to tackle chunks that I’ve mostly taken on one at a time.

At least for now, unlike the penny and half penny sets, this one is not a #1 ranked set. There’s a 100% complete set in the category, and that’s hard to overcome with a 50% complete set. The other problem I’m going to face here is that the 1956 is a key-date from a points perspective. That coin is worth considerably more than most of the other dates in the set in similar grades so it’s going to be hard to take the top spot in the category without getting one of those.

There currently are no pictures that are up to my normal standards for these coins and sets, but one thing that you might be able to notice from looking at NGC’s pictures of the coins in the slabs is that these 3 pence coins in particular are quite small. At 16.3 mm in diameter, they are a fair bit smaller than even a Roosevelt dime, which clocks in at 17.9 mm. The 6 pence coins come in a little larger than a US penny, with a diameter of 19.4 mm. I have to wonder a little WHY did they make these so small given that they’re not silver – they’re copper-nickel – so it wouldn’t have been an issue of keeping the silver value / melt value down.