Elizabeth II 1967 Penny mis-strike

Elizabeth II (1952-), bronze Penny, 1967, with notch defect to flan, young laureate head right, M.G. incuse at centre of truncation for designer Mary Gillick, legend and beaded border surrounding, + ELIZABETH. II. DEI. GRATIA. REGINA. F: D:, rev. Britannia seated right with trident and shield, sea beyond with lighthouse distant at left, date in exergue, weight 9.41g (FR.257; S.4157). The notch defect extinguishing a small ellipse of flan at 7-8 o'clock on obverse and corresponding part of reverse, light bagmarks otherwise UNC and an unusual error flan though of the most common date, very rare.

The abbreviated Latin legends translate as on the obverse "Elizabeth the Second Queen by the Grace of God, Defender of the Faith."

Provenance:

We recently opened a Royal Mint sealed £5 face value bag of 1967 pennies, intact for 52 years since issued, and of the 1,200 pennies within only this one demonstrated the "notch defect."

The problem with notch defects is a problem inherent at the mint since they first had to cut blanks from sheets of metal using blanking machines. The blanking process can produce up to 16,000 blank flans a minute by feeding sheets of metal through the machine with its multiple punches producing good quality blanks. Sometimes the feeding of the strip of metal can warp or slip therefore mis-cutting some of the blanks. The resulting notched blanks are usually discovered straight away and defective flans sent back to the melting pot before the next process. However smaller notch defective flans like we have here sometimes make it all the way through to being struck as coin and find their way into a mint bag sent to the banks. At least a 1 in 1,200 occurrence but probably a lot less frequent than that. It is only with modern advances in technology that such flawed blanks are not seen on modern decimal coinage of today.