Milestones in the decimal coinage of the Isle of Man

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The triskele or triskelion appeared on the reverse of the ten pence coin.

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The 50 pence featured a superb design of a Viking ship.

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The Royal Mint produced the 1971 issues of the Isle of Man's circulation coins, but after that the Pobjoy Mint, a privately owned mint located in England, took over, beginning a long relationship between Pobjoy and the Isle of Man.

After only five years of the Ironside designs, the Pobjoy Mint produced a new set of reverse designs for the island. These were created by Barry Stanton, who had previously done work for the Royal Mint and the Franklin Mint. The new series was issued in 1976.

One feature of the new series was that the word "NEW" was dropped from the legends. It had been used on the previous series to indicate that these were decimal pence. The UK did not remove the word "NEW" from its coins until 1982.

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The half penny design portrayed a herring.

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In 1977 a variant of the half penny design was issued, with a reference to the Food and Agricultural Organisation. It was unusual to find First World countries issuing coins under the FAO scheme.

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The Isle of Man issued a similar half penny design in 1981, in honour of World Food Day.

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The penny depicted a Loghtan ram, a local breed of ram with four horns.

 

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A Loghtan ram.

 

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A Manx shearwater, a type of gull, appeared on the two pence coin.

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The five pence design shows the water wheel at Laxey.

As you can see, all the designs in this set are superimposed on an aerial view of the island.

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The Laxey Wheel is a large waterwheel built into the hillside above the village of Laxey in the Isle of Man. Designed by Robert Casement, the wheel has a 72-foot-6-inch (22.1 m) diameter, is 6 feet (1.83 m) wide and revolves at approximately three revolutions per minute. The Laxey Wheel is the largest working waterwheel in the world. It was used to pump water from the ‘Great Laxey Mines’ industrial complex.

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The ten pence once more featured a version of the triskele.

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For the reverse of the 50 pence, artist and sculptor Barry Stanton created a beautiful Viking ship design.

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Tynwald is the legislature (parliament) of the Isle of Man. It was established in the year 979. Tynwald Day is the National Day of the Isle of Man, usually observed on 5 July. Leslie Lindsay, another employee of the Pobjoy Mint, created yet another design of a Viking ship for a special fifty pence coin, to commemorate Tynwald's millennium in 1979. The design features the replica Viking ship used in the Tynwald Millennium celebrations, on whose sails is written "manx millennium viking voyage". The mast also features the Millennium logo: a circle containing a stylised triskele. A special version of the coin bore an edge inscription commemorating the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to the island. It was the first time that a heptagonal coin had carried an edge inscription.

 

 

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The standard circulation coins of 1979 carried a special circular mint mark that included the stylised triskele. The initials "PM" stand for Pobjoy Mint, while at the bottom left you can see batch marks in stylised letters, e.g. "AA", "AB", "AC".


See also: Batch marks on IoM decimal coins.