Can You Identify The Year Of This Early Ram 2c Tails Coin Roll?

If it's in a "Royal Australian Mint" roll, then the mint is Canberra, with 100% certainty. Melbourne and Perth coins were not rolled in RAM rolls, since those mints were never part of the "Royal Australian Mint".

I believe coins from the branch mints were shipped in bulk drums to the local Reserve Bank branch, and such coins (if rolled) would have been rolled in Reserve Bank wrappers, alongside with and perhaps mixed up with coins the Bank received from circulation for re-rolling.


The Mint still had manual inspection of coins back then; perhaps the checker saw something suspicious, picked it up to check it, said "No, it's good", and put it back. Or maybe it fell out of the bucket or conveyor belt and someone picked it up off the floor and put it back. Mint workers on the circulation coin floor don't wear gloves.

Coins are never "returned to the Mint", except for destruction. Once a coin leaves the Mint, it never goes home again except in visitor's pockets. If banks in a particular area find themselves with a surplus of coins, they would be returned to the Reserve Bank, and wrapped in Reserve Bank rolls. Reserve Bank rolls thus could be either pure Unc coins, pure circulated coins, or a mixture of both.

If a RAM roll is a genuine RAM roll (and hasn't been tampered with), then all the coins inside it should be uncirculated, Canberra-minted coins.

Neither the RAM nor Reserve Bank roll general circulation coins any more; this is outsourced to the security companies. And just like the Reserve Bank, the security companies are under no obligation to keep "coins from the Mint" and "coins from the banks" separate. So while a Chubb/Armaguard roll with Unc coins on both ends is statistically likely to have most if not all coins inside it Unc, there's no guarantees.

Anyone offering a guarantee on the contents of a roll (except maybe a RAM roll) has already looked inside it.