Anybody Know What This Is? (Pattern Nickel, Allegedly)

i know! but what is this, another chinese concoction of some sort?

Tagged for interest. Curious to see how this turns out.

Edited: Google is my friend....

The dies were destroyed, but plasters of them survived. I believe Heritage auctioned them off for 4000 USD a number of years ago, and it is from those plasters that dies were made and limited numbers of restrikes were made. There was the FSNC Jefferson "Pattern". It should be noted that the FSNC Jeffersons all have "FSNS 2002" stamped on them, which the coin in question lacks.

However, as per Heritage on the auction in 2001, linked above, "seen on this piece, an unofficial pattern struck in an unknown small quantity in more recent years from a die made from the original Hejda galvanos."

Obviously listing it as a "pattern" is a bit misleading, for both Heritage and the ebay seller; at least Heritage states clearly what it is later on in their description. If you're into fantasy pieces, $69 is better than $920, but it's slightly more than solely a fantasy piece since it depicts an actual rejected design for an actual coin. I might pay $10 for it...maybe...it's neat but not really my cup of tea.

There never were any "original" dies for this thing. All of the submitted designs for Jefferson nickel were plaster models none of them were ever rendered into dies, not even the winning Schlag design. After Schlag won the mint pretty much had him redue the entire design and that was what was used to create reductions/hubs/and dies. The Schlag "patterns" and this piece are modern "fantasies" created based on the original models.

I believe that was Anthony De Francisci's reverse design for the competition.