Modern Patterns
From time to time the U.S. Mint experiments with new coinage, such as when silver was removed. At that time the practice of using dies with Martha Washington for trial strikings began, since they would not be confused with "real" circulating money. Because they do not resemble money, no restrictions exist on the sale of Martha Washington pieces. Mint-produced modern patterns are very rare, with only a few pieces existing in private collections. The United States mint has placed restrictions on the sale of modern patterns that do resemble coins, such as the 1974 Aluminum Cent. At this time, such coins are bought and sold only on the black market, as it is considered illegal to remove them from the Mint.
One of the most expansive collections of American pattern coins is the Harry W. Bass collection, housed at the ANA Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Read more about this topic: Pattern Coin
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or patterns:
“A modern author would have died in infancy in a ruder age.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)