A French Republic Coin That Shouldn't Exist

Steve27

My friend is consigning a bunch of his coins to Heritage (that's what happens when you have a run-in with cancer and there's no one in your family who has any interest in collecting). One of them is an 1875-A French 5 Franc Hercules Group coin. Now you may think this is a common coin, but take a look what Heritage said about it:

https://coins.ha.com/itm/france/republic-proof-5-francs-1875-a-pr65-ngc-/p/3115-124001.s?ic2=mytracked-lotspage-lotlinks-12202013&tab=MyTrackedLots-101116

pruebas

I wish the best for your friend and hope he recovers fully.

Two comments about the coin.

Uncatalogued proof examples of coins do appear occasionally. I have a few uncatalogued modern Mexican proofs. And they exist for older coins such as Heaton Mint-made coins, usually coming out of a former insider’s estate.

However, you would think such a well-trodden area such as Paris Mint crowns wouldn’t have many surprises left.

And second, I’ve seen NGC call things proof that were debatable. PCGS mostly gets around this by using the SP designation, which I feel is a cop out.

bosox

The Paris Mint is a bit outside my area of expertise, but if that coin was a Canadian coin from the Royal Mint or Heaton, I would call it a specimen. The burr, square rims, and the detail lead me there.

From my Canadian experience, some specimens were never meant to escape the mint, so they remained uncatalogued until they show up in the wild. Like this one:

[]https://coins.ha.com/itm/canada/canada-victoria-specimen-cent-1884-/a/3029-30028.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515()

Steve27

I found this coin in the Heritage archives, It's the same year, and while it's called an essai, the word "ESSAI" doesn't appear on the coin.

pruebas

I was following this auction and it looks like your friend did well. $19k hammer!

Hopefully that goes a long way to helping the medical bills.

Rexford

“Shouldn’t exist” isn’t really a thing in this context when the minting of proofs was largely unrecorded in this period anyway. If such a proof exists and is “unlisted,” that just means it was unknown to or unrecognized by whoever wrote the reference book(s) about the series, not that it shouldn’t exist - though it may be very rare. In any case, from the photos it is clearly not a business strike and appears similar to other Paris Mint proofs of the period.

bidask

PROOF 65