1964-1965 International Nickel 25 cent test pieces from the Estate of Inco Officer Kenn Henderson
oreville
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Interesting reading!!!
Just to give Roger Burdette an advance look at the collection I will send him!!!!
2015 January 7 - 12 FUN US Coins Signature Auction - Orlando #1216
1964-1965 Inco 25 Cent Test Pieces
From the Estate of Inco Official Kenn Henderson
1964-1965 International Nickel Company 25 Cent Test Pieces. In 1964-1965, extensive non-precious metals coin testing was done outside the Mint at different facilities, including International Nickel Company, Dupont, and Corning Glass Works. The pieces in this lot are from the estate of Kenn Henderson, an officer of Inco at the time. Andrew Pollock wrote extensive background information about these pieces in his 1994 reference United States Patterns and Related Issues, pages 443-447. We strongly recommend that bidders refer to Pollock's in-depth treatment of these little-known patterns. We have grouped the 58 pieces in this lot into three categories: 1964 Inco Large Head 25 Cent Test Pieces, 1965 Inco Small Head 25 Cent Test Pieces, and Miscellaneous "Component Pieces." Included are:
1964 Inco 25 Cent Test Pieces - Large Head
Pollock-5340. 95% nickel, 5% silicon on 2% "Permalloy" Core. Plain Edge. 2 pieces. Pollock-5350. Pure nickel (Ni engraved in right obverse field). Plain Edge. 2 pieces. Pollock-5350. Blank Planchet for above. Pure nickel. Type 2. Plain edge. 1 piece. Pollock-5351. 45/55 nickel/copper (45 engraved in right obverse field). Plain edge. 1 piece. Pollock-5353a. 75/25 copper/nickel (CuNi engraved in right obverse field). Plain edge. 1 piece. Pollock-5365. 75/25 copper/nickel on 60% copper core. No engraving in field. Reeded edge. 1 piece. Pollock-5365a. 75/25 copper/nickel on 60% copper core. No engraving in field. Plain edge. 8 pieces. -- Blank planchet for above. Type 2. 1 piece. Pollock-5365b. 70/30 copper/nickel on 60% copper core. No engraving in field. Reeded edge. 1 piece. Pollock-5365c. 70/30 copper/nickel on 60% copper core. No engraving in field. Plain edge. 1 piece.
1965 Inco 25 Cent Test Pieces - Small Head
Pollock-5380. 95/5 nickel/silicon on 2% "Permalloy" core. Reeded edge. 6 pieces. Pollock-5380. Sealed in original presentation poly holder. 2 pieces. -- Blank planchet. Proof Quality, manufactured by the Franklin Mint. 18 pieces. -- Blank planchet. Similar to the above, said to be annealed in oxygen rather than nitrogen. 6 pieces.
Miscellaneous "Component Pieces"
-- 75/25 copper/nickel outer clad layer. 2 pieces -- Pure copper inner core. 2 pieces. -- Bonded 2-piece set - copper/nickel layer and copper core. 1 piece. -- Blank planchet - copper/nickel layers over copper core. Type 1. 1 piece. -- Blank planchet - copper/nickel layers over copper core. Type 2. 1 piece.
Comments
Thanks!
This group of pieces, direct from an officer of International Nickel Company's New York office, will be a great help in calibrating other pieces. It will also aid in making the final publication as complete and accurate as possible.
[I presently have access to about 140 Inco coins and blanks, so these 58 will enlarge the number of pieces by 1/3 - plus their clear identification by Mr. Henderson will improve accuracy and overall publication quality. As with the WW-II Pattern book, this will open new opportunities for collectors and researchers.]
Roger! I do not know how to access the new PM feature of this web site!!!
HELP!!
Please re-send me your email address to my email account if you prefer the email venue.
oreville!
TTIUWOP
Successful BST deals with mustangt and jesbroken. Now EVERYTHING is for sale.
I assume these are all Martha Washington issues.
These are Paul D. Merica issues. Incredible collection!
Here's the Kenn Henderson collection auction mentioned by oreville in the OP:
https://coins.ha.com/itm/patterns/1964-1965-international-nickel-company-25-cent-test-pieces/a/1216-6783.s
No, not at all. They are mostly International Nickel Company Inc. tokens celebrating the opening of it's brand new world wide research facility just outside of New York City (In Sterling Forest, NY) in 1964 on the reverse with the obverse showing the bust of Paul D Merica.
Sadly, Inco no longer has their huge research facility in New York.
The Inco pieces with Dr. Mercia's portrait were designed by Gilroy Roberts for Inco. Some of the small bust type (PDM-2) were made at the nascent Franklin Mint. Tests made by the US Mint using Martha Washington dies were the only ones the Mint technology office would accept as "meaningful" even though Inco hoped the large bust (PDM-1) design would be sufficient. [The CuNi-Cu-CuNi clad material finally adopted was first identified by Bell Research Labs. Inco's version was Cu-70/Ni-30 on a smaller copper core.]
The intent is to carefully document all Henderson items - coins, blanks and planchets - then correlate with other examples that have been similarly documented. [Data collection will include: design, diameter, weight, thickness, density, magnetic attraction, alloy or composition, face and edge description, and high resolution photos.]
The final product will be a printed color booklet examining the Inco and related "private patterns" in detail. The plan is to use the present Pollock numbers (from US patterns.com) and assign additional numbers as needed, but allowing for future discoveries. It would be nice to eliminate any "a, b, c..." suffixes.
There's no deadline. Accuracy and quality are determining factors.
Thanks for all the info and pictures.
These are way cool.
Thanks for the pic. Never seen one before. I like the steel blue one.
Successful BST deals with mustangt and jesbroken. Now EVERYTHING is for sale.
The pieces are mostly light gray - much like new clad coins. The blue photo is either odd oxidation or a color balance problem.
Agreed, most of the pieces are light grey but a couple of them including one large bust and one small bust Inco Paul D piece is a more lustrous piece with some blue toning.
Probably the ones made with radioactive cobalt...........
Found my half dollar Inco token yesterday. Any idea of the total population of this size and the dime size?
The switch to clad was not only the largest single event that ever happened to US coinage but it was also the most traumatic to the coin hobby, industry, and most individual coin collectors alive today.
These are historic tokens of that time now half a century in the past. And best of all they have attributes of being coins as well as patterns. I've long sought these and similar items that mark this historic event.
Most of the Inco "private patterns" are approximately the size of a quarter. 10-cent, 25-cent and 50-cent sample were included in publicity sets. But so far it appears that few 10-cent and 50-cent pieces were made for composition testing. This is understandable, since the purpose was to find compositions that would work in US vending machines and a quarter was the largest coin most of them accepted.
I'd appreciate photos and data on any of the Inco or Gould (1977) pieces members might have. Full credit given in the final report for all sources and images.
Those are pretty cool. Thanks for sharing as I had not heard of them. These days a quarter would likely have way more than 25 cents worth of nickel. Plus, i was under the impression that pure nickel was tough on dies.
From the same time period, Canada minted pure nickel nickels in 1967 - their centennial year. Won't find those in circulation anymore.
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson
My digital cameo album 1950-64 Cameos - take a look!
Canada made 5-cent coins from powdered nickel planchets produced by Sherritt mining. Their density is slightly less than coins made from rolled ingots.
Nickel can be difficult to work with in coinage but modern annealing and handling techniques have removed most obstacles. (Grrrr....spellcheck keeps wanting to replace that with "testicles.")
Give spellcheck the sack!
"The United States Clad Coinage" 1992 -Rapsus lists Bureau of the Mint trial pieces (pg 48-51) as well as some pieces made by DuPont.
The material I'm working on does not include the Martha Washington test pieces, although Inco provided samples of their 95% Ni-5% Si-peralloy core composition for Mint tests. The DuPont test pieces will be included, provided I can locate enough original material to make the section an improvement of present knowledge.
Here's a related piece of exonumia. Same company, right?
ANA LM
USAF Retired — 34 years of active military service! 🇺🇸
Yep: International Nickel Company. They promoted nickel for "everything;" however, they ignored the metal's toxicity to some people. (See https://rais.ornl.gov/tox/profiles/nickel_and_nickel_compounds_f_V1.html for a short exposition.)
At least one member mentioned his severe nickel allergy. Unusual but it affects some.
My wife has nickel allergy.
Is she allergic to only particulate nickel or alloy as in US coins?
Don't know the specifics. Can wear a stainless steel watch band.
ttt to help out a fellow poster
Ttt to help out a fellow poster discussing the DuPont bricks which preceded the International Nickel Company Inc test 25 cent pieces.
Did the INCO pieces have any clad? Or were they more solid like nickels?
Definitely… and to boot…different kinds of clad as they were still toying with how to perfect the cladconcept.
Awesome! Are there any photos of the edge to see the clad?
I never took the photos but I assure you that they exist. Same concept as the earlier DuPont dynamic bricks. The description of the Heritage auction lot in the thread describes the content of the clad 25 cent pieces.
1964 Inco 25 Cent Test Pieces - Large Head
The inclusion of the nickel combined with the copper made viewing the copper core more difficult to differentiate from pure copper.
Cool
It would be great to have EdgeView TrueViews for these, like this one:
It's great to see PCGS slabbing these privately-minted pieces with Pollock numbers now.
I picked up a number of the INCO planchets. They are in NGC slabs but it's probably worth cracking them out to examine them. Also, they don't have the Burdette-Leidman pedigree on them so that could be added as well
Inco was trying to demonstrate that the copper-nickel combination would preserve the look of the silver coinage without too obvious a copper looking coin. US Mint was not as concerned and wanted to reduce costs.
Interestingly, Canada went with the essentially pure nickel composition which made their coin magnetic which was a no-go for the vending machines in the USA.
Are there any records on the US Mint's evaluation of the Inco coins?
I wonder how much of that was due to Inco being a Canadian company?
The US Mint was very private about evaluating test pieces for possible clad coinage as they were very anti-coin collector and did not want to alert the coin collecting public to encourage even more hoarding of silver coinage. I am not the researcher that RB is with US Mint records. He is fabulous.
I was under the impression that INCO was a New York headquartered Corporation. They did have extensive Canada nickel mine holdings.
I also wanted to preserve the original Henderson collection and not lose the history by slabbing them with PCGS.
However, i have many ANACS slabbed pieces that I could shift to PCGS.
According to the following, the company did have headquarters in New York until 1998, but it also looks like they were acquired by their Canadian subsidiary in 1928:
https://mycompanies.fandom.com/wiki/International_Nickel_Company
By losing history, do you mean separating them from their binder pages where they are stored in relationship to each other?
Interesting….a Canadian corporation headquartered in New York City. That was back in the day that to be legit you had to be in New York. No more.
Also confirming this is the Wikipedia entry for Paul Dyer Merica, on the obverse of your pieces, which say he was president of the Canadian company:
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dyer_Merica
Wow I never realized that about international Nickel Company Inc being a Canadian Corporation.
Thanks Zoins for teaching me something new.
Does everybody here have Roger Burdette's book on the subject? I think I reviewed the galleys on that three times before it was published.
I respectfully submit that any Inco, Gould or related pieces should be slabbed using Burdette #’s as they are far more recent and much more accurate.
Roger's numbers sound good and he's done a lot of great research, but I think his numbers should be used on USPatterns.com or another online reference first.
Do you know if Roger can work with Saul and/or Andy to get his numbers posted to USPatterns.com?