okay im looking to obtain any modern coinage test pattterns that where eventually made into circulated coinage... like for lincoln cents , jeff nickels if you can help thanks
Good luck, they usually go for low thousands and really the only ones that you come across are the General Motors rolled cents from the 60s and the Martha Washington patterns for the quarter, half from the 60s. Some of the patterns from 1942 for changing the composition for the cent are very fascinating, one of the glass examples sold for big bucks at auction recently.
The Cheerios Sacajawea is (apparently) considered a test pattern and quite affordable compared to others (although not especially rare). I started looking at $1 coins because they are the most recently changed. I figured they would have the most affordable specimens. (maybe the America the beautiful and State quarter program as well). This site (http://www.smalldollars.com/) is pretty useful and it led me to a more pattern specific site (http://uspatterns.com/index.html). The second site also has an up-to-date list of auction prices realized for different varieties.
I've always wanted one of the Fraser 1952 Lincoln cent patterns, but supposedly all of the ones struck were destroyed.
In the UK, a new and much more secure £1 coin will soon be introduced - comes out in about a month. Since the piece had to be tested before (vending machines, etc.), the Royal Mint made about 200,000 trial pieces like this one. In theory they should all have been returned to the mint, but obviously quite a few did not make it back. Christian
