The 1923 half penny is the key date for the entire half penny series and represents the toughest financial challenge the half penny collector will face. The coin is desirable in all conditions with pitted and worn examples finding their place in budget half penny collections and pieces in AU50 or better often ending up in mid-range to high-end investment portfolios. While the 1923 half penny has a reasonably sizeable mintage of 1,113,600 coins being struck at the Sydney mint, these were dated 1922 and the 1923 mintage was actually struck at the Melbourne mint with a requested total of 480,000 coins (Sterling & Currency, 2008) . Despite this still relatively high mintage, only two dies were prepared for the Melbourne mint which should have been enough to strike about 150,000 coins but both dies formed cracks during the striking limiting the total mintage to a much lower figure. This was the first time the Melbourne mint attempted to strike half pennies and faults were bound to occur.
Die cracks typically form around the left side of the obverse legend with pieces struck from a later die state tending to form cracks around the right side of both the obverse and reverse legend.
