5 Drachmai - George I Pattern

Pattern coinage for Greece in the 1870s was largely driven by the country's membership negotiations with the Latin Monetary Union, which Greece formally joined in 1867. This piece dates to a period when the Greek government was actively testing designs and specifications against LMU standards before committing to full production runs. Whether this specific pattern was submitted for official review or struck speculatively by the Paris mint — which handled much of Greece's coinage during this period — is not firmly established in the literature.

KM#E12 is genuinely rare in any condition. Pattern survivorship from this era depends heavily on how many examples were distributed to officials versus retained by the mint.