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Holey dollar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Holey dollar is the name given to coins used in the early 1800s in Prince Edward Island and New South Wales, which were created by punching the middle out of Spanish dollars. This process created two parts: a small coin, which was called the dump in Australia, and a holey dollar.
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In the 1700s, the Spanish government minted a large silver coin which through wide circulation became known as the Spanish dollar. Around the end of the 1700s, this coin was in constant circulation in Eastern Canada and the United States. The value of the coin varied in different centers but was highest in Halifax. Using this knowledge, whenever the merchants of Prince Edward Island (PEI) secured them, they sent them to Halifax, to take advantage of the higher rate. The resulting shortage of coins in PEI prompted the governor to gather in all the Spanish Dollars he could and have their centers punched out. Both the central plug and rims were stamped with a sunburst. The punched centers passed as shillings and the outer rims as five-shilling pieces. The mutilated coins were thereafter no longer acceptable outside of the island, so as a consequence, became the official currency there.
When the colony of New South Wales was first founded in Australia, it ran into the problem of a lack of coinage. Governor Lachlan Macquarie took the initiative of using his large collection of Spanish dollars to produce suitable coins in a similar manner to that described above. However, the central plugs (known as dumps) were valued at 15 pence and were restruck with a new design (a crown on the obverse, the denomination on the reverse), whilst the dollars received an overstamp around the hole ("New South Wales 1813" on the obverse, "Five Shillings" on the reverse). The holey dollar became the first official currency produced specifically for circulation in Australia.
Macquarie Bank uses the holey dollar as their logo to represent ingenuity and financial knowledge.
Although not known as "holey dollars", several British colonies in the Caribbean used the same method for producing coins from Spanish dollars. They include British Guiana, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Vincent, Tobago and Trinidad. The holed coins and plugs circulated alongside various other coins made by cutting Spanish and Spanish colonial coins into sections. These coinages where denominated in either shillings and pence or bits, worth nine pence.
See Dominican dollar, Grenadan dollar and Saint Vincent dollar.
The Hutt River Province Principality issued a commemorative $1 coin in 1977 to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. In 1978, another issue of the Hutt River Province Principality's $1 coins was issued. This has no commemorative inscription. These coins are also known to numismatists as holey dollars as well.