The 1947 Florin is one the easiest dates to acquire in the George VI series due to the extremely high mintage of 39 million coins - the largest total mintage of any year in the entire Florin series. Despite the high mintage, in mint-state, the 1944-S and 1946 remains more common. The piece was produced at the Melbourne Mint before being shipped by rail to the various Commonwealth Bank branches where they were rolled. This caused even coins from original bank rolls to be plagued with bag-marks making high mint-state grades rare. Despite this, the 1947 Florin sells at a similar price to the much more common 1946 Florin and often cheaper than the even more common 1944-S making it seem somewhat undervalued. Due to the abundance of mint-state examples from the numerous bankrolls that have surfaced, circulated 1947 florins are worth very little, usually only selling for bullion value. The Melbourne Mint also produced a proof strike in 1947.
From 1946 the silver content in the Australian Florin series was reduced from 92.5 percent to 50 percent. It seems like that the high mintage of 1947 was partly due to the large number of 92.5% silver coins that were being removed from circulation for melting.
During WW2 the United States assisted with the production of Australian coins - including the Florin. The coins that were produced were not directly purchased by Australia but were instead part of a lend-lease program. At the conclusion of the war, Australia began to repay the US with silver that was collected from across Australia and melted down at the Melbourne Mint. In 1948 the Hobart Mercury newspaper reported that 14,000 pounds of old silver coins had been collected in Hobart and were airlifted to Melbourne to be melted and sent to the United States. (The Mercury, 1948)