Non-circulating legal tender (NCLT) refers to coins that are theoretically legal tender and could circulate but do not because their issue price, and/or their melt value at the time of issue is significantly above the fictitious legal tender value placed thereon. They are sold to collectors and investors with no intention that they be used as money. Notable examples would include commemoratives, proofs, bullion coins, presentation sets, patterns and the like.
Some coins intended as NCLT have historically circulated such as the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition Half Dollars which was a commemorative and the 1856 Flying Eagle cent which was a pattern.
Private issues are not NCLT because they are not legal tender and are properly viewed as medals.
Famous quotes containing the words legal and/or tender:
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone,
And a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse.”
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