By the end of 1856, the large cent was doomed. As one of his last official duties, just two weeks before the inauguration of James Buchanan, President Franklin Pierce signed the large cent's death warrant, the Act of February 21, 1857. It called for a new, smaller cent produced of a copper alloy that included 12% nickel. Regulations issued in April 1857 dictated that the new cents would be paid out after May 25 in exchange for old large cents or the fractional foreign coins whose legal tender status had been ended up the same February act. When the news was announced, nostalgia set in, as Americans of all ages recalled the bright red copper cents of their youth. Large cents began to be saved and collected, setting off a seismic event that was the genesis of American coin collecting as we know it. The Proof large cents of 1857 are relics of that moment, coined before the denomination took its last step into the abyss, the end of their long tradition in circulation but the beginning of an even more enduring tradition: large cent collecting itself.

This Proof-only variety is fairly plentiful, as Proof large cents go. Howard Newcomb expected new varieties to appear, as he made clear in the closing commentary of his landmark book, "…there are probably a few dies and combinations of known dies that have escaped my attention." Though the Proof large cents of this vintage were cherished by those who acquired them at the time, gems are rare today.

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the D. Brent Pogue Part V Auction, where it realized $11,162.