Catalog
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| Issuer | France |
|---|---|
| Year | 1888 |
| Type | Coin pattern |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Diameter | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Four-line inscription in the central field, reading SYSTÈME / ED. MARTIN / BREVETÉ / S.G.D.G., flanked on either side by an olive branch forming a wreath around the legend. The design is plain and typographic in character, without a portrait or figurative motif. The entire composition is enclosed within a beaded border. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Latin |
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| Additional information |
The Martin rolling system trials of 1888 were part of France's broader late-nineteenth-century effort to find a mechanically consistent method for producing bimetallic and clad planchets at scale — a problem that had plagued French coinage since the introduction of nickel compositions in the 1860s. These essais were never intended for circulation; they exist purely as industrial test pieces, struck to evaluate whether the lamination process could produce uniform cladding thickness across the full planchet surface.
Surviving examples vary noticeably in the adhesion quality of the nickel layer at the edges — which is itself the point: each piece is a data point, not a product.