The 1942-S Florin is an interesting piece struck at the San Francisco mint . The type was struck with a mintage of 6,000,000 and was produced in addition to 17,896,000 pieces produced at the Melbourne Mint in the same year.
This large mintage was created in response to a widely published shortage of both silver and copper coinage. Newspapers put forward a number of reasons for the shortage. One was that the influx of American troops following Pearl Harbour had increased the overall demand. Another was that overall spending by the public had grown due to the payment of military allotments and child endowments. The shortage had begun to cause substantial issues for traders and to resolve the issue local mintage 's were pushed to their productive capacities. (The Evening Advocate, 1944) The United States was also commissioned to produce six million additional Florins in 1942, and eleven million in 1943 and 144. These US coins were struck at the San Francisco mint with the 'S' mint-mark over the reverse date.