The high relief young head portrait of Victoria, combined with die clashing (when the blank feeder missed a blank), resulted in a high die failure rate through the middle of the reign. During the die numbering period (1864-1879) the obverse dies outnumber the reverse dies by about 50%. During 1867 a new obverse die (Davies obv. 5) was briefly introduced. This is in slightly lower relief than the previous portrait (obv. 4). A new reverse die (Davies rev. B) was also cut. The brevity of these issues suggests they were trials, identified by a small pellet above the die number. Following the trials, the stock of earlier 4B dies were used up for the remainder of the year. Starting in 1868 the new 5B dies would be used on the shillings until 1879.
This note presents a complete illustrated set of known die combinations and die numbers, allowing the trials of the 5Bs to be seen in the context of the whole year’s production.
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