Owner Comments:
While this is not technically a próbaveret (though they do exist for this type), this isn't a circulating coin either. If you consider a business strike issue for which the entire mintage was destroyed to be a pattern, then this is a pattern. Either way, what you see here is undeniably one of the rarest modern Hungarian coins, and it comes with a story.
In 1989 as the Soviets were preparing to leave Hungary, the mint made modifications to the circulating Hungarian coin types for 1, 2, 5, 10, and 20 forint to change the name of the country from The Hungarian People's Republic (Magyar Népköztársaság) to The Republic of Hungary (Magyar Köztársaság). They then produced trial strikes as normal for the issue, and hurriedly also produced an initial (unknown but believed to be small) mintage for 1989, and a larger (several million of each type) issue for 1990, as it was near the end of the year. The specimens reached officials higher up in the new government and they were extremely upset that the first coins with the name of the new country should also bear the Soviet arms of Hungary. So it was (to the mint) a sudden and unexpected political decision that stopped them dead in their tracks, and the coins were ordered to be destroyed.
It is known that somehow a deal was made to put aside 10,000 sets of the 1990 issue for sale in uncirculated souvenir sets. Those sets still appear on the market from time to time, and I have a full set of NGC certified 1990 transitional coinage in my modern type set. These 1990 issues technically have the same status as the 1989 issues in that they were never approved for circulation, but as they were sold to the public as souvenirs they are in a grey area where they are also transitional souvenir coinage.
The 1989 coins, however, were not sold to the public and the entire mintage was destroyed, save, apparently, for a few pieces that were spared. Estimates place this at fewer than 10 surviving examples of each type, for which I have examples of both the 1 and 2 forint in this set. As I mentioned earlier, they did produce próbaveret pieces for these, but as they each have the typical mintage of 50 specimens, while extremely rare, they are actually more common than the surviving planned business strikes.
So for the US collectors who might be reading this, the 1989 Hungarian Republic issues are similar to the 1933 St. Gauden's double eagles in that the mintage was ordered destroyed for political reasons, and yet, a few examples escaped the melting pot through unknown channels.