Issue of Sovereigns to United States Sailors, Australia 1925 1 1

[Fenntucky Mike]

I thought this was an interesting little article. I had never really thought about how monies were exchanged between a visiting fleet or army and governments. I wonder how much gold was carried onboard and how much was deposited on a stop like this?

You should be able to zoom in on the pic and read the article. 

[Zebo]

  A total of American gold dollars weighing 58,979.94 ounces were melted in Melbourne during 1925. Possibly all from the transfer mentioned above. The Melbourne Mint archives should have additional information on this melting. This amount was recorded in the Royal Mint reports and the information was provided to the Royal Mint by the the Superintendent of the Melbourne Mint.

Australian sovereigns were sought after because of their more yellowish hue given off from the alloy of silver vice the British copper. This pretty much ended in 1868/1869, however when the Royal Mint mandated that all sovereigns no matter where they were minted conform to British standards - thus copper alloy. The mints did experiment in some later years with using silver and copper as alloys, but this was short lived. You can find Australian sovereigns having silver as well as sovereigns having copper as an alloy dated 1868. It is believed that those minted with the copper alloy were actually minted in 1869, but dated 1868 as there are no Sydney sovereigns dated 1869.

[RWB]

Use of silver as an alloy for gold coins was also common to US gold for the first 50 years. The reason was to reduce time and expense of refining native gold to legal standards. If there was too much silver in native gold, foreign coins of known alloy could be added too "sweeten the melting pot." If native gold was too low in silver the mints could "sour the milk" with foreign silver coins of known alloy. The value of US gold coins was calculated on gold content, only. Any silver was a bonus.

[Zebo]

On 4/7/2024 at 12:29 PM, Fenntucky Mike said:

I thought this was an interesting little article. I had never really thought about how monies were exchanged between a visiting fleet or army and governments. I wonder how much gold was carried onboard and how much was deposited on a stop like this?

You should be able to zoom in on the pic and read the article. 

Excellent find by the way!

[Fenntucky Mike]

On 4/7/2024 at 2:33 PM, Zebo said:

  A total of American gold dollars weighing 58,979.94 ounces were melted in Melbourne during 1925. Possibly all from the transfer mentioned above. The Melbourne Mint archives should have additional information on this melting. This amount was recorded in the Royal Mint reports and the information was provided to the Royal Mint by the the Superintendent of the Melbourne Mint.

I assume that by "U.S. dollars" it is meant any U.S. gold coin, presumably double eagles. It would be interesting to know what U.S. gold was exchanged, type and date, but it's highly unlikely such information was recorded.  

 

[Zebo]

On 4/8/2024 at 6:34 AM, Fenntucky Mike said:

I assume that by "U.S. dollars" it is meant any U.S. gold coin, presumably double eagles. It would be interesting to know what U.S. gold was exchanged, type and date, but it's highly unlikely such information was recorded.  

 

I would also assume double eagles as gold dollars would be a feat in itself. Here’s a bit more from the Melbourne records:

In 1925 large shipments of gold from America arrived and the Melbourne Mint was authorised to pay for imported gold in sovereigns.