2001 Large and Small Obverse 5cent
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Brought to attention by I. Hartshorn

"The Ian Rank-Broadley effigy was much larger than the previous design. This caused certain problems during coining and in some cases we experienced poor die life. One problem being the volume of metal flow, due to the large design. In order to correct this, we eventually reduced the size of the image on 5 cent coins which resulted in the small variation that you have observed. The introduction of the new effigy resulted in variations on most obverse designs up to 2001 and you have no doubt observed many of these! Indeed, the Mint is constantly evaluating the performance of its coinage tooling and introducing subtle modifications in order to improve efficiency and quality."
Email received from Royal Australian Mint, Thurs, October 30, 2003

Other differences to look for on the LARGE obverse, the legend is closer to the rim, 3-4 faint line marks on the neck are missing, and the designer initials "IRB" are wider apart with the R & B not joined.