Welcome to today's deep dive learner. We are
we're so glad you're here with us today. Our
mission is to basically completely dismantle
how you think about that. loose change rattling
around in your car's cup holder. Yeah, it's it
really challenges the whole idea that currency
is just this sterile means to an end, you know.
Exactly. We have a single source document today,
which is the Wikipedia article on the Australian
two dollar coin. Yeah. And we're going to use
it to prove that this tiny, you know, seemingly
mundane piece of metal is actually a master class
in heavy industrial logistics, behavioral economics
and some deeply moving cultural storytelling.
Right, because when you actually stop and read
the specific object, I mean, it acts less like
a financial token and, well, more like a highly
condensed cultural timeline. I promise you, by
the end of this conversation, you will never
look at a handful of change the same way again.
We are talking about an everyday item that somehow
bridges the British monarchy. incredible aboriginal
resilience, and completely unironically brightly
colored children's television characters. That's
a pretty wild mix. It really is. Okay, let's
unpack this. Before we get into the historical
gravity stamped onto the coin, we need to understand
its physical blueprint. Like, why does this unusually
dense, heavy little disc even exist in the first
place? Well, the existence of this coin is rooted
entirely in a pretty harsh economic reality,
which is the cost to mint ratio. Right. The two
dollar coin was officially born on June 20th,
1988, but the Australian government had actually
been engineering its release since the mid 1970s.
Really? The mid -70s? Yeah. They spent over a
decade just plotting the demise of the old $2
paper note. Over 10 years just to swap paper
for metal? I mean, that seems like an enormous
administrative headache for a $2 denomination.
It was a massive undertaking, yeah, but it was
driven by this concept of circulatory life. I
mean, we all know paper tears into grades, right?
Yeah. The sheer financial burden of printing
low denomination notes is just staggering. A
heavily used $2 note might only survive in the
economy for, say, six months before the central
bank has to collect it, destroy it, and then
pay to print a replacement. Wow. Six months.
Yeah, so over a 30 -year timeline, you're paying
to replace that exact same $2 value, like, 60
times. But a metal coin is minted once and can
circulate for decades with almost zero maintenance,
so it was just a pure cost -saving necessity.
That makes perfect economic sense, but the physical
specifications they ultimately landed on are
just wild to me. It's essentially like a physical
zip file. That's a great way to put it. It packs
this relatively high economic value into a remarkably
small surprisingly heavy frame. The dimensions
listed in the source are incredibly specific,
so it weighs exactly 6 .60 grams. It's a chunky
2 .80 millimeters thick, but its diameter is
only 20 .50 millimeters. Right, which gives it
an incredibly dense weight -to -size ratio, and
they used a really specific alloy for it. 92
% copper, 6 % aluminum, and 2 % nickel. Okay,
so that's what gives it that durable golden color.
Exactly, but that diameter you mentioned, the
20 .50 millimeters, that's the true quirk of
its engineering. Because it means the dollar
coin is physically smaller than the Australian
one dollar coin. So I kind of have to push back
on this design choice here. If the government
spent a decade engineering this, why intentionally
make the two dollar coin smaller than the one
dollar coin? Doesn't that invite massive confusion,
especially for tourists visiting the country
who naturally assume bigger coins equal more
money? Oh, it completely invites confusion. And
it was a major concern at the time. But, well,
the mint was trapped by the existing physical
ecosystem of Australian currency. What do you
mean? Well, by the time 1988 rolled around, the
one dollar coin had already been introduced in
1984. And the silver coins, the large 50 cent,
20 cent, the 10 cent, the five cent, they were
already thoroughly entrenched in every vending
machine, parking meter and payphone in the entire
country. Ah, so they couldn't just make it bigger
than the one dollar coin because it would either
rival that massive 50 cent piece or require retrofitting
millions of coin mechanisms. Precisely. They
had to thread a very tight mechanical needle.
I mean, the vending machine industry dictates
coin sizes just as much as the government does.
That makes sense. So the two dollar coin had
to be heavy enough to register its value, but
small enough to not be confused with the silver
coins. To compensate for the really small diameter,
they made it exceptionally thick. Furthermore,
they had to ensure it was tactically unique for
the visually impaired. Which brings us to the
edges. The Wikipedia article details this beautifully.
It doesn't just have a rough edge, right? It
has this interrupted milled edge. Yeah, the milling
is fascinating. There are exactly 20 notches,
but they're mathematically grouped into four
lots of five grooves, and each of those lots
is separated by exactly seven millimeters of
perfectly smooth edge. It's pure tactile engineering.
You can feel exactly what denomination you are
holding without ever pulling it out of your pocket.
And through this bizarre twist of global numismatic
synchronicity, those exact dimensions, the 20
.5 millimeter diameter and the specific interrupted
milling meal, the Australian $2 coin shares the
exact same physical profile as the 10 Swedish
Kroner coin. Oh, wow. I love that. Two entirely
different economies, thousands of miles apart,
arriving at the exact same physical zip file.
Yeah, it's a really funny coincidence. Okay,
so we've established this dense, golden, mathematically
precise canvas. Let's look at the artwork actually
stamped onto this highly durable surface. Because
there are two sides to this coin, and they present
an astonishing, almost jarring contrast between
two very different historical worlds. They absolutely
do. Let's start with the obverse, commonly known
as the head side. By tradition, this side is
reserved for the reigning monarch. So for the
vast majority of this coin's circulatory life,
from 1988 all the way to 2023, that meant Queen
Elizabeth II. But even that portrait wasn't static,
was it? It functioned almost like a slow -moving
clock of her reign. Yeah, it evolved in distinct
eras. So from 1988 to 1998, the Mint used a portrait
sculpted by Raphael McClough. Then they shifted
to a more mature depiction by Ian Rank, broadly.
Right. Later in 2019, they introduced an effigy
by artist Jody Clark. It's basically a chronological
rotation of artistic interpretation capturing
the passage of time. And of course, the clock
keeps ticking. Following her death, 2024 saw
the debut of King Charles III on the obverse
designed by Dan Thorne. So on one side of this
tiny piece of metal, you have the ultimate unyielding
symbol of British institutional power. a literal
crown, but then you flip it over to the reverse
side, the tail side, which was originally designed
by Horst Hahn, and you are confronted with something
altogether different. You really are. The reverse
side features what was initially intended to
be an archetype of an aboriginal elder. However,
the specific visual inspiration for this design
carries profound historical weight. The image
is actually based on a drawing by an artist named
Ainsley Roberts. And the subject of that drawing
was a man named Goya Changere. who was historically
known by the moniker One Pound Jimmy. Right.
Yes. And while he was known by that name in popular
culture at the time, the true gravity of his
story comes from the fact that Jungari was a
Warlpiri and Mataraman from the Northern Territory.
Crucially, the Wikipedia article notes that he
was one of the few survivors of the 1928 Coniston
massacre. Which was one of the last recognized
massacres of Aboriginal people. perpetrated by
British authorities in central Australia. Exactly.
What's fascinating here is the stark objective
duality resting right in the palm of your hand.
On one side of the single coin, you have the
reigning monarch of the British Empire. On the
literal other side. permanently bound to the
same piece of metal, you have a man who survived
a massacre perpetrated by the forces of that
very same empire. That is just an extraordinary
historical tension. It really is. And the design
surrounds him with the Southern Cross constellation
and native glass trees anchoring his image entirely
to the Australian landscape. It is, you know,
incredibly heavy when you actually stop to think
about it. And it makes me want to ask you. and
our learner listening, how does a deeply tragic
historical event like the Coniston massacre become
memorialized on the most common item of daily
commerce? Like when this coin is carelessly exchanged
for a pack of gum or left as a tip on a cafe
table, does that constant mundane transaction
trivialize his story? Or does stamping his face
into a metal designed to outlast us all somehow
immortalize it? That's, I mean, it raises an
important question about the function of public
memorials, doesn't it? Yeah. There is certainly
an argument that placing profound historical
trauma onto pocket change risks diminishing its
gravity through sheer repetition. Yeah. But the
alternative perspective is that it guarantees
unprecedented visibility. It ensures that Goya
Tsenggeroi's face and the broader history of
Aboriginal resilience is interacted with by millions
of people every single day. It weaves that history
into the literal fabric of the nation's economy.
That's a really powerful way to look at it. Interestingly,
the source notes that the designer, Horse Han,
had his initials included on the coins minted
in 1988 and 1989. But from 1990 onwards, those
initials were removed. Oh, so the artwork ceased
to be an artist's personal creation and just
became a permanent cultural symbol. Exactly.
It stands entirely on its own as a national emblem
now. Wow. So for decades, that incredibly solemn
duality was the only version of the $2 coin spinning
through the economy. But then we hit this massive
turning point. The Royal Australian Mint seemingly
realizes that this highly durable piece of metal
doesn't just have to be a static monument. It
can be a dynamic evolving canvas. And we enter
what I like to call the era of color. Oh, this
is a true watershed moment in 2012. The Mint
released a special $2 coin to commemorate Remembrance
Day. The standard design featured a poppy flower
with the words, Lest We Forget, but they took
this unprecedented step. What'd they do? They
released a limited run of 500 ,000 coins where
the center poppy was physically painted red with
a black core. This was Australia's very first
colored circulating coin. I have to pause here
because the engineering required to pull that
off is just staggering. We just talked about
how these coins live in pockets with keys, they
get dropped on concrete, they go through washing
machines. The mint had to figure out how to apply
pigment to a mass circulating piece of metal
so that the color actually survives the violence
of daily commerce. And they proved it could be
done. The red poppy survived circulation. And
once they successfully demonstrated that durability,
the floodgates of design completely opened. It's
like they realized they could turn the national
currency into, you know, highly durable circulating
trading cards. Yeah. The evolution is rapid.
Just a year later, In 2013, they release a coin
with a purple circle for the 60th anniversary
of the Queen's coronation. Thematically, they
stayed in that solemn commemorative space for
a few years. In 2014 and 2015, for the centenary
of ANZAC and to honor the poem In Flanders Fields,
we see intricate colored designs, green doves,
red stripes. They even managed to print a sunset
orange sky onto the medal. But then... They take
a hard left turn away from military anniversaries.
And this is where it gets incredibly fun. They
realize the power of distribution. They start
partnering directly with Woolworth supermarkets
to release the coins. Yeah, it becomes super
mainstream. Right. In 2016, they drop a series
for the Rio Olympics and Paralympics featuring
the bright Olympic ring colors. In 2017, they
do a whole series based on the beloved children's
book, Possum Magic. And the color palettes become
wildly complex at this point. We're seeing vibrant
pinks, purples, blues, and navy circulating out
in the wild. Here's where it really peaks for
me. Okay. In 2019, they literally put Mr. Squiggle,
a character, with a pencil for a nose from a
classic children's TV show, onto the legal tender
of a sovereign nation. It's brilliant. We're
talking about turquoise, yellow, and bright pink
coins being handed back to you as change when
you buy groceries. And more recently, they've
done cherry blossoms for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics,
bright orange for firefighters, and a deeply
striking black, red, and yellow design for the
Aboriginal flag in 2021. If we look at the behavioral
economics of this shift, it is remarkable. Introducing
vibrant color combined with those limited run
distribution deals through supermarket tills,
it completely rewired the public's relationship
with the coin. How so? Well, it took people who
were entirely passive spenders and turned them
into active, obsessive collectors practically
overnight. Oh, people started hoarding their
change. They did. The velocity of money actually
slowed down in this specific denomination because
people refused to spend the colorful ones. The
currency became a nationwide treasure hunt, which
perfectly sets up the sheer logistical nightmare
of how these coins actually get into our pockets
because these colorful collectible disks don't
just magically manifest in cash registers. There
is a massive industrial machine dictating supply
and the Wikipedia data on the minting figures
reveals some completely fascinating, quirky economics.
Yeah, everything traces back to the Royal Australian
Mint in Canberra. That is the sole facility.
where every one of these coins has ever been
struck. The logistical scale of replacing the
paper note back in 1988 is hard to overstate.
Right. To ensure a smooth transition and prevent
a currency shortage, they had to absolutely flood
the market. They minted a staggering 160 .9 million
two dollar coins in that first year alone. 160
.9 million. Just try to visualize that mountain
of heavy metal just injecting thousands of tons
of copper and aluminium into the economy. simultaneously,
and that massive initial drop created a fascinating
long -term ripple effect. It really did. Because
they over -indexed so heavily in 1988, by the
time 1991 rolled around, the market was completely
saturated. There were just too many coins. So
how many standard $2 coins did the mint produce
for general circulation in 1991? Exactly zero.
Not a single one. Wow. And that anomaly isn't
just ancient history either. It repeated itself
very recently. In 2023, there were again zero
standard $2 coins minted for circulation. That's
crazy. To give you a baseline for how dramatic
that drop is, the source notes that the average
mintage from 1989 to 2008 usually sat around
22 million per year. So going from 22 million
to absolute zero illustrates just how meticulously
the mint has to monitor the physical wear and
tear or the hoarding behaviors of the public
just to balance the supply. It is a logistical
high wire act. But speaking of the rules of the
game, there is one legal rule in the Wikipedia
article that we have to discuss because it sounds
completely made up. The legal tender limit. Yes,
there is a strict legal tender limit on the $2
coin. By law, you cannot pay a debt using $2
coins if the total amount exceeds 10 times the
face value of the coin, meaning the maximum amount
you can legally force someone to accept in $2
coins in a single transaction is $20. Ten coins.
That is the hard legal ceiling. OK, I am pushing
back on this aggressively. Money is money. If
I owe my mechanic 50 bucks and I hand him a stack
of 25 legally minted government -approved $2
coins, why on earth is it baked into the legislation
of the country that he can refuse my payment?
Is the government literally just trying to save
us from having our pockets ripped open by the
sheer weight of these dense little disks? I know.
It sounds totally absurd on its face. But if
we connect this to the bigger picture, legal
tender laws are not just about defining what
has value. They are fundamentally designed to
prevent economic friction. The law exists to
prevent people from weaponizing heavy coinage.
Weaponizing coinage. Yes. Imagine a scenario
where a disgruntled citizen decides to pay off
a $10 ,000 municipal tax debt entirely in $2
coins just to spite the local government. Oh
my gosh. That transaction would require wheelbarrows.
It would require multiple bank tellers hours
of manual labor just to count and verify the
payment. It grinds the efficiency of everyday
trade to an absolute halt. Okay, when you put
it that way. Right. So the $20 limit ensures
that while the coin holds valid economic value,
it cannot be used as an administrative weapon
to harass a creditor. Legal tender simply means
a creditor is legally obligated to accept it
to clear debt. This law protects the creditor
from being buried in copper. That is brilliant.
The fact that weaponizing heavy craneage is a
legitimate economic threat that requires parliamentary
legislation just adds to the mythos of this little
coin. So let's step back and look at the incredible
journey we've just taken learner. We started
with a dry economic need to replace a fragile,
easily destroyed paper note because it was costing
the government too much money. Yeah. And that
utilitarian requirement resulted in the engineering
of a physically tiny, surprisingly dense golden
disk with mathematically milled edges designed
to trick vending machines. And that purely functional
piece of metal accidentally evolved into one
of the most dynamic cultural canvases in the
country. I mean, it holds the solemn permanent
historical tension of the British monarchy resting
back to back. with Goya Chungarai, a survivor
of devastating colonial violence. It then pioneered
color printing technology that survived washing
machines, turning everyday grocery shoppers into
avid numismatic hoarders. It celebrated everything
from the solemnity of war veterans to the sheer
joy of Pasa Magic and Mr. Squiggle. And crucially,
we learned that you are legally barred from using
a wheelbarrow full of them to pay off your mortgage.
It is an almost unbelievable amount of history,
physics, and utility packed into 6 .6 grams of
metal. It really is. So the next time you reach
into your pocket or you look at that loose change
resting in your car's cup holder, remember what
you are actually looking at. You aren't just
holding transactional currency. You are holding
a highly engineered, deeply storied piece of
an entire nation's identity. But Lerner, I want
to leave you with one final provocative thought
to mull over today. We established early on that
the $2 coin was born entirely because it had
a longer physical circulatory life than a paper
note. Its physical permanence was its entire
reason for being. But as we accelerate closer
and closer toward a fully cashless society, a
world where we just tap our phones and the physical
longevity of currency no longer matters, what
happens to this incredible storytelling medium?
That's a great question. When the coins eventually
stop circulating, does this portable tactile
history, you know, the colored poppies, the tributes
to aboriginal resilience, the faces we carry
in our pockets, does it just vanish into vaults?
Or will we find a new, equally pervasive way
to hold onto our history? Something to think
about. Definitely. Thank you so much for joining
us on this deep dive. Keep asking questions.
Keep looking closely at the everyday objects
hiding in plain sight around you. And we'll see
you next time.