The Original 5 Liberty Head Nickel Set Of 1913

Thanks for Sharing! a Buffalo nickle in Copper would have been Amazing!

What, no wooden nickels!

I think I like the 1911 Lincoln nickel pattern the best.

The area of U.S. Pattern coins is my guilty pleasure, though I can't really afford to play in the game, I do have many photos collected over the years and I've read so much about them. It was an area of numismatics that had been really under appreciated in the earlier days, up to and through the mid 1960's when I was born.

So many of most rare and interesting pattern coins were just a few dollars and often even cheaper than many of the regular issued and so-called "rarities" of a series.

Abe Kossoff was one of the dealers that handled patterns. His stories of working with them make me cry at the cost of many he sold, literally handfuls of them could be had for a hundred dollars well into the 1950's.

One of Abe Kosoff's books on patterns is free at NNP
https://archive.org/details/illustr...kos/mode/2up

Coins that were in the absolute best condition however were always a premium in cost, even the patterns. By the 1970's the prices began to climb and once the Garrett sales began prices on US Patterns were out of many collectors budget.


And to see what I mean on pricing, have a look through this early 1960 Q. David Bowers "Empire Coin Company" Fixed Price List of US patterns from the Major Lenox R. Lohr collection.
https://archive.org/details/uspatte...mpi/mode/2up

Two numismatists today that work the pattern field, have also built a wonderful website. Thanks to:

Andy Lustig
Saul Teichman

for their hard work in creating, maintaining and hosting the https://uspatterns.stores.yahoo.net/ and in spite of the "store" in that URL they are not offering anything for sale.

The website's Mission Statement is:

The Society of U.S. Pattern Collectors is dedicated to the study of many of the rarest coins struck at the U.S. Mint: patterns, die trials and experimental pieces.

It is probably one of the best places one can go to do research and ask questions, as well as to just browse and thousands of interesting and varied patterns of our coin designs.

Give them a visit - it costs nothing but a desire to want to learn and a lust for knowledge, plus they have a lot of cool pictures too!

I will concede the "US Patterns" website is not the easiest or friendliest to use, and it could do with a serious updating just to bring it into the modern age of webdesign, but most of it works fine, (one exception the search engine never seems to work at all). I do use the site fairly regularly in my researching, and have yet to find any serious flaws in the information contained within it.

Thanks for this great post! The Buffalo struck in copper is amazing.
Today is the last day of the month and I just checked my wallet and it's empty so maybe I can sell it for $10800 like that leather holder?

@westcoin, I agree with you there! There's a small dealer in the Houston area I got to know well over the years who specialized in patterns. I loved looking at his inventory, but the expense of building a pattern collection was just too high...

@westcoin

Thanks that was really helpful & learned alot.