Hong Kong 50c 1990 - what's the correct mintage ?

Numista's entry for the 1990 Hong Kong 50c says the mintage is 27,000

NGC (ngccoin.com) says 27,000

But Wikipedia says 27,000,000

Which is correct ?

Krause also says 27,000

The problem with the sources here is that NGC and Numista have the same source:
the KM-catalog and there are many many mistakes in it.
If the coin is a normal circulation coin I would tend more to adding a few zeros but it could also be the correct figure ... you should search for another source than one based on the Krause Mischler catalog and/or find the source of the Wikipedia article.

Although not a 'recognized' research method, I've just put "1990 Hong Kong" into EBay's "Worldwide" listings for Coins.  Currently there's only 1 listed Worldwide.
So I tried "Worldwide Completed". In the 43 results there were only three 50c - two from Turkey and one from France - all weeks ago..
As a comparison I typed into the same search "Hong Kong 50 cents" and there's 330 returns.
Type in "1988 Hong Kong" and you'll get approx 25 full 1988 sets, but only 1 separate 50c from Canada. [ i988's are also listed as very low mintage by Krause ]

Not very scientific I know, - but this would suggest that the coin is in fact rare, and possibly a lot rarer than most numismatics realize.

crude statistics are still statistics    maybe they still have enough predecessor coins so they minted it just to have a new portrait for the sake of completeness.

Quote: Idolenzcrude statistics are still statistics    maybe they still have enough predecessor coins so they minted it just to have a new portrait for the sake of completeness.

On further research this is a very real & distinct possibility - with the previous 1977 to 1980 portrait version they minted over 310 million 50c coins in 4 years, - 120m in 1980 alone. Nickel-brass is an extremely hardwearing coin combo, so I can't see them having to replace anything but miniscule amounts because of wear/damage.

I found a aUNC condition 1990 that has a nice start of rainbow toning, along with 7 other 77-80s in a batch of coins, so I'm going to encapsulate it and treat it as a rare. ( Unless, of course, an expert comes onto this thread and says that Wiki is right and Krause is wrong )

This coin type has a Numista Rarity of 20, and 7 members have it for swap. That is suspiciously common for a coin with less than 80,000 mintage!

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces5586.html

EDIT: Colnect has 192 members owning this coin, with 8 for swap and one for sale. Also, Colnect has a different mintage for the 1988:

https://colnect.com/en/coins/coin/6750-50_Cents-1953~1992_-_Elizabeth_II-Hong_Kong

Quote: "bmnobbs"​

Quote: "Idolenz"​crude statistics are still statistics maybe they still have enough predecessor coins so they minted it just to have a new portrait for the sake of completeness.
​

​
​On further research this is a very real & distinct possibility - with the previous 1977 to 1980 portrait version they minted over 310 million 50c coins in 4 years, - 120m in 1980 alone. Nickel-brass is an extremely hardwearing coin combo, so I can't see them having to replace anything but miniscule amounts because of wear/damage.

​If this were true, we would see the same trend with other denominations, like 20c and $1.

Hello,

Thanks everyone for bringing this to my attention, it has been corrected.

This coin is indeed very common to my knowledge; I think whoever created the page was referring to the mintage numbers used on a site (http://www.hkartclub.com/coin/hkcoin/hongkong50cents.html) that I too referred to while renovating the Hong Kong catalogue; it listed mintage numbers in millions, and decimal points of millions (e.g. 0.05 instead of 50,000) making things very confusing. So that likely explains the low 27,000 number; a mixup in numbers.

Hi,

In my opinion, year 1990 was only year for this type to put into circulation in HK. So I won't believe it has only 27,000 mintage or considered "rare" (although it is noteably rarer than 2nd portrait 50 cents)

I used to live in Hong Kong and probably have a few of these 50 cent pieces from 1990...

I would be very very surprised if there were only 27000 made!
You can find them quite easily in circulation in Hong Kong even now!

I find it interesting that Krause would put the coin at such low of a mintage, although I've heard that Krause can be very incorrect sometimes :)... Why is that?

Hope this Helps :)
ShadowyEnigma

Quote: "ShadowyEnigma"​I used to live in Hong Kong and probably have a few of these 50 cent pieces from 1990...
​
​I would be very very surprised if there were only 27000 made!
​You can find them quite easily in circulation in Hong Kong even now!
​
​I find it interesting that Krause would put the coin at such low of a mintage, although I've heard that Krause can be very incorrect sometimes :)... Why is that?
​
​Hope this Helps :)
​ShadowyEnigma

​No, you can't find them easily, though it is very possible; most of them are second portrait ones! The third portrait pieces are rarer.

I think it's a mistake Krause made in the older editions. Somewhere between 1999 and 2006 Krause changed the way they show mintages.
This is how they did it in 1999 (and earlier):



So the Hong Kong 50 cent was like this:



The mintage for 1990 was written as 27,000
If it really was 27,000 pieces it would have been written at that time as .027 (like the 50 cents 1988) so I guess they made a mistake and 27,000 had to be written as 27.000
After changing the way they show mintages they took over the previous comma and in the newer edition it became:

Quoting from Some Like It Hot; Nobody's perfect I suppose.

Not even Krause, which is scary to think about.

Goodness me, - going by Essor Prof's catalogue photos above, they still have the 1990 figure wrong in the later editions too.