Cook Islands, Princess Diana Varieties

I figure that I would start in the forum, as my son and I have discovered the existence of several varieties in the Diana, Princess of Wales series.  

However, the major question here is, would these be separate new entries or placed as a variety on each existing page?  Our belief is that the differences are so significant / major, to warrant separate catalog pages for each.  However, how would the mintage numbers be addressed?   Cross-linking between the two catalog pages?

The question is complicated because we are not sure which is the normal issue and which is the variance . . .  Some of the confusion has to do with, the work of the photo contributor on the pages (many of the obverses in this series and other Cook Island Westminster Collection series appear to be stock photo or copy/paste jobs).

Before going further, I will post images of two separate coins from one of the varieties discovered (We have photographs of the other varieties, but for brevity, we are only using the “In Thailand” portrait):

(With IRB)

(Without IRB)

The differences in the obverses are quite obvious - It appears to occur on every single coin in the Diana collection, at least for the 2007, 2008, and 2009 collections.  For simplification purposes, we  refer to these as “with IRB” and “without IRB” varieties.

What we've also noticed is that it appears to be on the Queen Elizabeth II theme collections as well, leading to our hypothesis that one obverse may have been meant for one collection (QEII theme), whilst the other was meant for another (Diana), i.e., a pseudo-mule.  Another hypothesis is that one obverse might have been meant for domestic (UK) issuance, whilst the other may have been meant for foreign collectors, i.e., intentional regional variation.

Unfortunately, we contacted Westminster, and were not able to get anything definitive at all.   We were hoping for rough mintage estimates or some explanation, but received nothing.

In sum, should we create new catalog pages?    Modify the existing pages to contain “Without IRB” in the title (as most appear to be stock photos of this variety)?

Please advise.

Very respectfully, RCS

Re: Stock photography usage - the link to the catalog page for the photographed coin is N#162199 - which can easily be verified to contain the exact same obverse photo as the ones on the following catalog pages:

N#162209

N#162204

N#162211

N#162201

N#162207

N#162203

Also, if this is in the wrong category of the forum, please feel free to move it.  This is our first post, normally we just contribute photographs.   Thank you!

Ist the one without even authentic? The portrait looks like ass in comparison to the other one.

Where did the one with IRB come from? Not from Numista.

@Idolenz the interesting thing is the one without IRB is the one most common in the catalog portraits of QEII.  Not sure if it was a regional portrait - if you’ve seen some of the  Diana portraits on Liberian coins, they can be quite comical.

@rsirian1 both were purchased in sets at auction.   We have quite a few of these sets and never noticed until we began taking photographs.   They are all authentic, all from Westminster Collection sets (blue felt cases with portcullis).  Numista does not have the complete series, there are at least 64, possibly more.   The more commonly seen ones are the ones from the 2007 set.  Unfortunately, some of the photos on Numista appear to be stock (see original post).

Thank you. To answer your original question they should be separate page as they are not varieties but have significant design differences on the obverse.

Thank you @rsirian1!  That’s the line of thinking we had - just weren’t sure about the site preference.  Will try getting to them when we have some time; there’s quite a few of them. 

Thank you @rsirian1!  That’s the line of thinking we had - just weren’t sure about the site preference.  Will try getting to them when we have some time; there’s quite a few of them. 

I'm collecting Queen Elizabeth II coins however I'm not a fan of Cook Island issues… I have  about 10 of these and resigned to complete more. I have more 1$ coins from similar 2007-2009 Diamond Wedding series, all of them are with non-IRB obverse.

This was the basic version for these Cook Island series I guess. It is stylized on the IRB portrait and some of the other coins with this effigy have the IRB initials however this portret was not designed by Ian Rank Broadley. This portrait is known as “habit” portrait. See this topic on friendly website Worldofcoins for more info.

I noticed that Diamond Wedding coins are with both reverese when IRB version were added to Numista for some of the coins. In first moment, I guessed it was a duplicate but noticed that the obverse is different.

I guess two options: 1. Westminster could notice that the basic non-IRB portrait is poor quality and issued some coins with new (or rather “old”, well known IRB portrait) or 2. mint mixed some blanks and they issued these coins with obverse designed for other coin for some of the mintage.

Unfortunately,  we don't know the mint which manufactured these coins. I don't guess that this was any of the well known european mint.

I also agree that these coins should be catalogue on separate pages, same as for Diamond Wedding coins. However, please create the pages only for the coins that you have the proof they exist. I'm guessing not full series is with both portraits.

@MMowiec Thank you for the info!  The Diamond Wedding coins were the ones that we were thinking of having mixed obverses with.  At first, we thought perhaps the wedding coins were tied to the IRB obverses, and someone at the mint forgot to switch out the die.  However, it seems (as you've noticed) that the wedding collection also has coins with both obverse types.  I believe there is at least one more series as well, but the legend is slightly different with the denomination on the reverse (Kings and Queens of Britain series).

I requested modification on the current page for the Thailand coin, and duplicated the page with small changes for the second obverse.  If both are approved, we will (slowly) begin doing the same for the other catalog pages.

We noticed that the page titles differed slightly, and we thought it would be best to standardize the titles and series for this collection.  Currently, there are some with (Princess Diana), (Diana Princess of Wales), etc. in the titles . . . and the series have variations too.

Our suggestion is:

Title:  1 Dollar - Elizabeth II (Princess Diana in/at ABC, with/without "IRB"), where ABC is the photograph location

Series:  Diana Princess of Wales

As for page creation, of course - one of our observations on the original posting was that the photo contributor had used the same obverses for multiple listings.  Although we believe that each coin has both obverse types, we will only create what we can actually photograph ourselves.

Please note that there are also non coloured version of these coins, without gold plating. 

I guess all versions for one reverse motive should be cross-linked by references to other pages.

@MMowiec Those were for the Diamond Wedding set and some others, if I'm not mistaken?  I don't believe the Diana set had plain cupronickel versions available.  Liberia has Diana coins in both cupronickel and silver (with maybe a couple in gold), but all versions are non coloured, and each has a different denomination.

Ah, true: plain version are for Diamond Wedding. I didn't see the ones for Diana.

I would say the base version is “habit” effigy, so no needed to write in the title "without IRB", I would say that better could be with adding “with IRB” /or “IRB portrait” only to the pages that this apply. And keep the simpler the title of standard one version.

But anyway, this is good to update the titles with the way you proposed, adding the info regarding each reverse photo.

“Simple bust” (or short bust) and “Draped bust” might be used to describe the design differences.

“Simple bust” (or short bust) and “Draped bust” might be used to describe the design differences.

Draped bust is the normal numismatic description for such a representation.

Draped/short or uncouped/couped also popular term but I mean that for this draped/uncouped bust without initials, maybe not necessary to add this info in the title anyway as this is the “standard” one version for these series and titles could be already quite long. The short/couped bust with IRB initials was kind of rarer variants here so this should be included in the title (and in the description of course that is good to write the differences on each page).