1900 Newfoundland 20 Cents
Victoria · 4 varieties · study revised Aug. 18th 2013
The 1900 Newfoundland coinage is unique for a number of reasons. Primarily, it was the last date issued for the reign of Queen Victoria and also, the only coinage which was not minted during the 1800's. In addition, it appears to be the only year where the final three digits were punched to make up the date, instead of the usual two. Of course, this is not really too surprising since the mint not only had to change the decade and the year, but also the century.
Read Barry's full introduction
With 125,000 coins minted for this year, it would seem only reasonable to believe that there might be more than just a couple of varieties floating around in this sea of silver. As the research began on this date, it immediately turned up two distinctive varieties which have now established themselves as the most common in this group. Both of these are Wide Dates but the difference was with the spacing betwee the first three numerals. The first of these varieties had a Wide "19" and a Narrow "90", whereas, the 2nd variety had the converse of this positioning. Shortly after this discovery, a 3rd variation appeared which had a noticeably Narrower date than the other two. Then for the longest time, it seemed that this date was complete with three different coin varieties, when a 4th and extremely rare variation appeared. This last variety was unusual because it was the only one of this group which exhibited any signs of Re-engraving! In this instance, the letter "S" (in the word "CENTS") had been noticeably modified and also, the two "0's"of the date had been punched slightly lower than those of any of the other variations!
At the moment, there are four known varieties and interestingly enough, two of these have the Narrow "19" and the remaining two have Wider gaps between these two digits. Now with four new varieties, this date has delivered an exciting conclusion to a very interesting series!!
