We’ve all got a skeleton in the closet and so does the Royal Australian Mint, which revealed that a convict counterfeiter was in charge of manufacturing our first official coins in 1812.

Now that’s irony.

Convicted counterfeiter William Henshall, who was fresh off the boat from England for forging Bank of England dollars, made our first currency.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Usually, convict ancestry is a shameful secret, but now we wear it as a badge of honour and the Royal Australian Mint has just released a new Holey Dollar $1 coin to commemorate our dodgy past.

The reason why William-the-con-artist made our first currency was because he was a nifty but shifty metal worker – and Governor Macquarie had a sense of humour.

Royal Australian Mint CEO Emily Martin said Governor Macquarie “was quite ingenious”.

“They had a real problem in terms of there just wasn’t enough circulating money in that very early economy,” Ms Martin said. “And he came up with quite a creative solution.”

Not unlike today, where cash is scarce, 200 years ago the young colony of NSW faced a severe shortage of currency, so Governor Macquarie imported 40,000 silver “pieces of eight” coins from Mexico.

He then entrusted convicted counterfeiter William Henshall (who was serving a sentence for said counterfeiting) as craftsman to produce Australia’s first legal tender.

This story is uncannily similar to the Hollywood movie Catch Me If You Can, a true story of a con artist employed by the FBI to catch fraudsters.

William the con man came up with a bargain “two-for-one” deal, hole-punching the 40,000 Mexican silver coins (the outer ring became the Holey Dollar, worth five shillings, the centre became the Dump, worth fifteen pence).

With inflation and time, today an original Holey Dollar is worth a fortune.

The Mint splashed $160,000 at auction last year on an original 1813 Holey Dollar for the National Coin Collection, believed to be one of only 300 surviving examples.

“We’ve had people find them when they’ve been ploughing a field,” Ms Martin said. “One was found just near the Blue Mountains in 1939. In 1995, a Holey Dollar was discovered on the banks of the Shoalhaven River on the south coast. That lucky person later sold the coin for $60,000.”

The Mint now owns three original Holey Dollars and is about to make 35,000 “Origins of Australian Coins”, or a $1 Holey Dollar uncirculated coin.

There won’t be any “dumps” left over this time round (like discarded doughnut centres) because the Mint used a blank that was shaped with a hole in the centre.

And who better to mint the new Holey Dollar $1 coin than Ambassador of Mexico to Australia, His Excellency Ernesto Céspedes Oropeza.

The original 40,000 Mexican silver coins were our earliest diplomatic relations.

“This new $1 Holey Dollar coin is a symbol of the longstanding connection between Mexico and Australia,” Ambassador Céspedes Oropeza said.

“More than two centuries ago, Mexican silver ‘Spanish Dollars’ from the royal mint in Mexico City travelled along the historic Manila Galleon trade route from Acapulco to the Philippines, then to Madras in India and ultimately to Australia.”

And straight into the hands of a convicted counterfeiter.

To purchase a limited-release coin, registration for the EQL ballot opens at 8.30am on Friday 4 September. To register, visit ramint.gov.au