Oddball British Royal Mint modern trial coin

desslok

Got this rather unusual piece:

The obverse is in the shape of a Sierra Leone coin, with the added inscription Royal Mint Trial
The reverse is in the shape of an Uruguay coin, with the added acronym I.M.I.K.N.B, which stands for Imperial Chemical Industries, Kings Norton Birmingham.

As I've discussed here in the past, the IMI Mint, or Kings Norton Mint, went into liquidation a few years ago and many strange and unusual pieces from around the world were recovered from their archives. I presume this could be one of them.

Strangely, PCGS have been inconsistent in slabbing these. One batch was slabbed under Sierra Leone:
pcgs.com/pop/valueview.aspx?s=711380
While another identical coin, submitted at a different time, was slabbed as a Uruguay coin:
pcgs.com/pop/valueview.aspx?s=624413

So basically the same type of coin was awarded two different series numbers in two different countries, although in reality neither one is correct. The is not a Sierra Leone coin nor a Uruguay coin, it is apparently a privately minted token struck at a British mint, for test, trial or presentation purposes. If anything, it should have been slabbed under Great Britian, IMHO.

pruebas

I know of 3 varieties of this trial piece. They differ in the small letters inside the "5". I'm not in front of my computer right now, so I can't tell you what letters the others have.

I suspect they were doing trials at differing locations using whatever dies were at hand.

Since the obverse die was of a real person (some Sierra Leone dictator), they added the mustache.