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2 Shillings - George VI Trial Strike
| Issuer | British West Africa |
|---|---|
| Year | 1942 |
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| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Nickel brass |
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| Obverse description | Crowned effigy of King George VI facing left, modelled by Percy Metcalfe, wearing the Tudor Crown. The king is depicted with a bare neck and truncated bust. The engraver's initials 'PM' appear on the truncation. The surrounding legend reads: GEORGIVS VI D · G · BRITT · OMN · REX F · D · IND · IMP, distributed around the periphery within a beaded border. |
|---|---|
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| Mintage | 1942 |
| Additional information |
British West Africa's coinage was administered through the West African Currency Board, which periodically commissioned trial strikes to evaluate new alloys before committing to full production runs. The shift toward nickel brass in the early 1940s was driven by wartime material pressures — nickel was a strategic metal, and the standard alloys used for pre-war issues were being redirected to the British war effort. Trial pieces from this period were struck at the Royal Mint and rarely entered circulation, existing solely for metallurgical and bureaucratic approval.
Survivors are essentially institutional artifacts. Most known examples were retained by the Mint or the Currency Board rather than distributed.