Privately-issued "Patterns"

Ron Guth: This category is a mish-mosh of weird and wonderful numismatic items, some of which are fanciful combinations of rusted dies that had been discarded by the U.S. Mint, plus some privately issued tokens, sculptor's electrotypes, a pattern for a U.S. coin made at the Paris Mint, and more. In reality, these are among the more interesting items included in the Judd reference on U.S. Patterns.

Highlights include a 1792 "Trial Piece" struck by Dr. Montroville Dickeson, who combined an eagle die from a revenue stamp with a reverse die indicating that it had been used at the U.S. Mint to make coins (which it had not). The eagle obverse die used to strike that piece was also used to create another fantasy in this section when someone (Dickeson?) combined it with rusted obverse dies from an 1805 Half Eagle and an 1805 Quarter Dollar.

Another interesting coin is a 1793-dated Half Cent made by planing off the head of Libery and replacing it with a head of George Washington.

Included in this category are several electrotypes of designs proposed by the great numismatic artists James Earle Fraser and Anthony deFrancisci.