Author: Kathryn

The Purple Penny was the target of coin theft that occurred on August 28th 2020. A man and a woman visited our shop on Hurtle Parade in Mawson Lakes on Friday afternoon and stole an album of coins. The details of the theft can be found in the police link below and your help with identification of the offenders is appreciated. Please share the post and call Crime Stoppers if you have any information 1800 333 000.
South Australia Police Facebook post

A black Purple Penny album (without the slipcover) was taken containing many coins all of which are errors and varieties. These were Australian pre-decimal halfpennies, pennies, threepences, sixpences, shillings and florins with minor errors. These may be planchet flaws, edge bites, partial collar errors, broadstrikes, cuds, split planchets and varieties. The album also contained some world errors in particular from New Zealand and Great Britain.

Some of the stolen coins exactly as imaged are seen below. If you see these exact coins we urge you to contact Police.

We recently spoke with a reporter for Channel 9 news about coloured $2 coins and their interest to collectors and I mentioned an error coin that came through our hands recently. That coin was the 2019 Mr Squiggle Bill the Steam Shovel that was mistakenly printed with the colour on the wrong side of the coin. Such an obviously wrong coin with the coloured circle over the Queen’s portrait this coin sold for a 4 figure sum over $6,500. The news couldn’t believe what they’d heard that an error coin made that much money in the marketplace. With only a handful of these bullseye or paint on the wrong side error coins this was the first known on a Mr Squiggle series issue. Before we knew it we had a news crew at our new shop (more details on that soon) filming for a story featuring the recently sold error coin.

Link to the News segment video.
9 News Queensland

The news story aired on Friday 26th April 2019 to Brisbane local audiences and mentioned the “finder” of the coin almost spent the $2 on a loaf of bread. An interesting extension of that story is that the error coin surfaced in Tasmania, the husband found the “funny looking” $2 in the console of the car and spoke to his wife about the coin to which she said bring it home and I’ll take a look. Later the coin could not be found and after a search of the house it turned up in the back of the couch!! The Purple Penny was then contacted for coin error advice and the rest is history.

The wrong paint error coin can be found here:
Australia 2019 $2 Mr Squiggle Bill the Steam Shovel Paint on Wrong Side Error

The Purple Penny has a new phone number. You can now contact us on 0422 977 753. That’s 04229 PRPLE for those intrigued by the number choice! We look forward to hearing from you if you want to sell or buy coins in particular if you are in Adelaide. We buy coins Australia wide, take a look at our Google reviews from customers of The Purple Penny. If you are looking to purchase have a browse of what we have for sale, pop the items in your shopping cart or call or email us about something specific you are looking for.

A bug in the WordPress update has rendered our newly listed items page currently displaying items in the incorrect order. This problem is being looked into and hopefully will be rectified soon. We apologise this site feature is currently unavailable to our customers.

As a workaround for the time being all new items will feature on the webshop home page so they can be easily found.

edit- 20 Aug this issue is now resolved.