1858 20c Canada/'new Brunswick Mule

That's the reason they are all high grade.
They never went into circulation.
Bowman has it listed as trial piece B-6 if
you are looking for a reference.

Ha - so it was just a bunch of design guys in England trying to decide what the various parts of Canada's coins would look like!

It's Bowman #B6
Charlton PC4
New Brunswick did not adopt the dollar until 1860.

Yes, I'm aware of the catalog listings. Fred Bowman and I were friends -- I used to visit him and his wife in Montreal. But Royal Mint 19th century specimens are not always what they seem. How about the 1875 New Brunswick 5c? Is its existence then to be taken as evidence for a proposed 1875 coinage for New Brunswick? So again I ask does anybody know of solid proof that B6/PC-4 employs a Province of Canada pattern reverse?

This was part of the description for C-V's coin when it was sold on Heritage..

"As mentioned in the Norweb catalog, possibly created as a "mint sport" by Charles W. Fremantle who was deputy master of The Royal Mint from 1868-1894 and is known to have created similar strikings for other countries"

I'm not sure how much I trust this theory though, as it would have been much more convenient to use an out of service 1862 NB specimen die than it would have been to hub an entirely new die with a new date and then give it a specimen finish. It reminds me of the 1864 NFLD pattern cents with a NB/NS obverse legend, which appear to be accepted as legitimate patterns..

I am much more useful with the KG-VI series than I am with Victoria though.

I'm in the process of writing a paper on the "odd" B.N.A. specimens struck during Fremantle's tenure, so I'll confine myself here to the coin at hand, the Prov. of Canada/N.B. mule 20c, and give fewer details here than will be in the paper.

Without any other information this coin has the potential of being entirely believable as a pattern, the reverse being rejected in 1857/8 and later finding use for New Brunswick. But suspicion doesn't constitute fact. The surviving records seem to tell the real story. Forty years ago I read Leonard Wyon's diary (in the British Library). He discussed in some detail his work on the master tools for both the coins and medals he produced. When there were patterns, he mentioned it and in cases like the Nova Scotia mayflower coinage of 1856 the tools for both the patterns and adopted designs were included in The Royal Mint die accounts. In the Province of Canada accounts there is only one 20c reverse matrix and punch, what must be the adopted designs. Even if someone else had engraved a pattern 20c reverse, it would have been in the die accounts. Then, in 1862, there are notations discussing the completion of the matrix for the New Brunswick 20c, including the addition of the legend, followed by the matrix being brought into the die accounts. There seems little doubt that the master tools of the adopted reverse for the N.B. 20c were not completed prior to 1862. Why I think this mule was made will be discussed in the paper.

In any case, C-V, your coin is a beautiful treasure regardless of when and why it was created.