Other than magician coins, this is my first one-sided coin. It is apparently a 2-Mark pattern with a design that was not adopted for business strikes in Germany. It is dated 1876. The experts at NGC have identified it as “Scaaf-2M/G3 Silver Trial” and graded it PF66 Cameo. OK, for a cameo designation both sides of the coin must exhibit the cameo but I suspect that rule can be waived on a one-sided coin. I knew nothing about the coin when I first saw it 1-month ago. I saw it again yesterday & realized that I still knew nothing about the coin. It was now in a new NGC holder and I bought it (before anyone else saw it). I just located one for sale on the Internet this morning for about 7x what I paid. I hope that you enjoy this one as much as I do. I’d like to learn more about this trial piece so please post any information you might have. Thanks for letting me share. Very best regards, collect89
This is one impressive piece Collect89 thanks for posting it , it must look stupendous in hand. I must say you are amassing quite the collection friendo.
Wow, gorgeous coin Collect89.... and very interesting to say the least. I'm glad NGC started using these new holders that somewhat show the edge. Beautiful coin....
Thanks for looking everyone. Since I got this one, I've been searching my books & the Internet for other 1 sided coins. I haven't found any except for medals & a few really cool pattern pieces. If anyone at CT has another 1-sided piece, I hope they will post a photo.
With these German Empire coins above 1 M, it would make sense to have one-sided patterns. After all, the other side would always be country (state) specific, and if you want to try a new eagle out, you would not need that ... If you go to http://www.ma-shops.de/ and enter "Schaaf" as your search term, you will see quite a few patterns, but hardly any one-sides pieces. The first eagle (used until 1890) was criticized to some extent because it was not very "wide" and thus did not "fill" the center of the coin. Yours comes close - as far as the round shape is concerned - to the second version, used from 1890 until the end of the monarchy in 1918 ... Christian
Thanks for the good information Hello Chrisild, Thank you for the German coin Web link! The site has a few one sided pieces listed (I think there were three pieces). They are all in the 500 Euro to 600 Euro price range. At the end of the listing, I found this one which is really close to the design on my coin. Perhaps someone at CT would be interested in it. They want 225 Euro for it.
