The 1866 nickel five-cent piece patterns were struck as part of a deliberate lobbying campaign by Joseph Wharton, the Pennsylvania industrialist who controlled the country's only significant nickel deposits. Wharton pushed Congress hard to adopt a nickel alloy for the new small-denomination coin, and the Mint obliged by striking patterns in multiple compositions — including copper — to demonstrate the concept to legislators. The copper strikes like this Judd-462 were trial pieces, not proposals for circulation, produced to show what the design would look like before alloy decisions were finalized.
The 1866 nickel five-cent piece patterns were struck as part of a deliberate lobbying campaign by Joseph Wharton, the Pennsylvania industrialist who controlled the country's only significant nickel deposits. Wharton pushed Congress hard to adopt a nickel alloy for the new small-denomination coin, and the Mint obliged by striking patterns in multiple compositions — including copper — to demonstrate the concept to legislators. The copper strikes like this Judd-462 were trial pieces, not proposals for circulation, produced to show what the design would look like before alloy decisions were finalized.