Imagine if the US Mint still let out patterns like the Canadian Mint

Zoins

It's very interesting how many modern patterns exist for Canadian coins when the only modern US patterns that are available for collectors have been waffled.

I just ran across this uniface platinum pattern from Canada. It's a 1985 coin to test platinum strikes for when Canada first started issuing platinum coins in 1988.

How did this coin get out? Does Canada try to prevent these from leaving the Mint or are there formal ways for these to leave, like US Patterns in the 1800s. This is a Mike Byers / @Byers coin, and as usual, Mike has a great write up.

• https://www.ebay.com/itm/UNIQUE-1985-Canada-Proof-100-Unofficial-Platinum-Strike-Uniface-PCGS-PR-67/272038994856?
• https://www.pcgs.com/cert/32959434

The closeup images are TrueViews and then slab photos are Mike's.

IkesT

@Zoins said:
It's very interesting how many modern patterns exist for Canadian coins when the only modern US patterns that are available for collectors have been waffled.

I'm not familiar with the modern Canadian patterns - you may be right that there are more of them, since there are few modern U.S. patterns.

However, there certainly are modern U.S. patterns in private hands that are not waffled. How many of them there are depends on your definition of "pattern", but even by a strict definition, there are some.

I would guess your Canadian example got out the same way that the U.S. 2007-W platinum proof patterns got out - the mint released them to the public by mistake. Perhaps more patterns have been released in error from the Canadian mint than the U.S. mint. Either that, or Canadian mint security isn't quite as good, or Canadian mint employees are better smugglers...