Privately-issued Patterns 1792-1938

Some pieces that look like United States patterns were never made at the Mint. A few were proposals by private engravers, such as Jacob Perkins's cent and dollar trials of 1818 and 1819 or James Earle Fraser's electrotype models of 1911 and 1915. More were made for collectors. In the early 1860s the Mint sold worn-out dies as scrap, and Montroville Dickeson, Joseph J. Mickley and others used them, sometimes with dies of their own, to strike pieces for sale. Still others are imitations made for a different purpose, such as the Kettle & Sons gaming counters dated 1803.

The 1792 cent that opens the series is one of Dickeson's. Its eagle-on-a-rock die was made for embossing revenue paper; he seems to have taken it for a rejected 1792 cent design and had a reverse die made to go with it. About a dozen are known in copper. NGC dates them to about 1859 and uspatterns to the early 1860s.

Judd Appendix C. Judd's United States Pattern Coins puts pieces made outside the Mint in Appendix C, numbered by the date on the piece: Judd-C1866-3 is the third entry dated 1866. Pollock uses his 5000 series for private pieces and his 6000 series for one-sided strikings made outside the Mint with dies it had scrapped. Neither reference is consistent about what it includes, and some privately struck pieces keep regular Judd numbers. The 1804 half eagle in silver, Judd-30, was struck outside the Mint from scrap dies but is numbered with the patterns.

Kinds of private piece.

• Restrikes from scrap dies use genuine Mint dies, often rusted or cracked, after the Mint sold them: Judd-30 of 1804 and Dickeson's 1805 quarter muling.
• Fantasies pair dies that never belonged together, or use dies made for something else, like the 1792 Dickeson cent.
• Private designs are proposals or tributes by outside artists: Perkins's 1818 cent, Charles Bouvet's 1849 eagle, and Joseph H. Merriam's Lincoln pieces dated 1866.
• Electrotypes are copies made by electroplating a model rather than striking it, such as Fraser's 1911 and 1915 trials.
• Imitations copy a coin for another use, as the Kettle gaming counters do.

Metal and edge. As with Mint patterns, each metal and edge gets its own number. Merriam's Lincoln design dated 1866 runs from Judd-C1866-1 (gold, reeded edge) through C1866-3 (silver, reeded) and C1866-6 (nickel, reeded) to C1866-8 (brass).

• 1792: Dickeson's cent, Judd-C1792-1 in copper. A white metal striking, Judd-C1792-2, is also known.
• 1800 and 1818: pieces attributed to Jacob Perkins, the Newburyport engraver credited with the Washington funeral medals: a Washington dollar-size piece and the 1818 cent, Judd-C1818-1, of which about half a dozen are known, several of them electrotypes. Perkins moved to England in 1819.
• 1803: the Kettle & Sons gaming counters of Birmingham, England: a quarter eagle copy in brass (Judd-C1803-1), the same in silver or silver-plated brass (C1803-2) and a half eagle copy in brass (C1803-3).
• 1804 and 1805: the Judd-30 half eagle in silver, from an 1804 obverse cracked across its face and a rusted reverse, and Dickeson's 1805 quarter muling, whose obverse die survives at the American Numismatic Society.
• 1849: an eagle designed by Charles Bouvet, Judd-C1849-1. Three or four are known, on thick and thin planchets, and those traced are graded as brown copper.
• 1866: Lincoln pieces attributed to Joseph H. Merriam, a Boston medalist and die sinker, pairing his Lincoln portrait, with the motto GOD AND OUR COUNTRY, with a reverse from a Mint pattern die. They are catalogued with the three-dollar pieces, and Merriam made a similar design dated 1868.
• 1911 and 1915: James Earle Fraser's electrotype trials: the Indian head he first made as a cent in 1911 and later used on the Buffalo nickel, and an obverse and reverse for a quarter dollar connected with the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, all from his estate.
• 1984: Andor Orand's squared quarter, a Washington quarter redrawn as a square with the help of a computer program. It was struck in 1982 from dies made by the Medallic Art Company and sold by Square Deal Productions of New York. Krause lists 300 in copper-nickel-zinc, 1,310 in quarter-ounce silver, 602 in half-ounce silver, 12 in gold and 15 in bronze, with no figure for brass.

The series name ends in 1938 because Judd's Appendix C does: its last entry, Judd-C1938-1, is a reverse electrotype that Anthony de Francisci entered in the 1938 nickel competition. That piece has no page yet, and the 1984 squared quarter falls outside the pattern references altogether.

Several of these pieces were sold as something they were not. Nineteenth-century auctions offered Kettle counters as patterns, often with the KETTLE name removed, and many of the pieces struck from scrap dies were made to sell to collectors of rarities. Some dies and examples are now in institutions: the American Numismatic Society holds the 1805 quarter die and the 1819 Perkins dollar trial, and Orand gave dies, lead trials and samples of the squared quarter to the Smithsonian in 1988.

Electrotypes, cast copies and later restrikes exist for several of these designs. Pollock mentions possible restrikes of the 1849 Bouvet eagle made in the 1880s, and at least three of the half dozen known 1818 Perkins cents are electrotypes.