Here's today's puzzle

[vampicker]

What do you think is the material in the retained stuff in the center of the image?
If you were at FUN and heard me talk about this, hold your fire.

[DHalladay]

A Cocoa Puff nugget?

[JASONKFLO]

Almost looks like a small bug.

[Tekkie1]

I thought it was your example of cancelled dies JR.

[vampicker]

Struck by a cancelled die, but what's the crud?

[...kenny]

Steel/ metal chip from cancel tool?...

[raynat3]

Part of the chisel?

[Tekkie1]

My Un-edjumacated guess is it looks like carbon.

[dave700x]

A piece of silver from 1884 - or - something agent Mulder warned us about?

[Mediocrates007]

Die flake from the canceled die?

[vamnuke]

Tip of a knife ?

[vampicker]

At least one of you is kinda close. I'll tell the story about what this is later tomorrow.

[Kurt28]

I'm not really good at this, but if I had it in hand I would see if it was attracted to a magnet.

[shortnock]

Metal from host coin.

[iwillbenice]

Chip.

[vampicker]

OK, here's the story. This is obviously struck by a cancelled die. In fact, this is one of the 2 oz tokens Ash had struck with the mated 84-CC pair he bought at the ANA. I did an 'About VAMs' column on the dies right after the show. I've had the dies in hand. The pic is from the ANA. After the tokens were struck from these, the die faces were shiny again, which makes sense, because that's a lot of metal flow across their surface during coining. It got me thinking about where the patina from the die face went,. I strongly suspected it would have been embedded as debris in the first few pieces struck from the encrusted dies. At FUN, Ash had the first struck piece and some of the early strikes. His Number 1 piece has a bunch of little spots that are struck thru retained patina. I purchased this example, the 15th piece stuck, specifically for the fairly big chunk of retained patina on the surface of the chisel cancellation
'Struck thru retained patina' is a fairly unique type of feature I doubt I'll ever see again.

[Mediocrates007]

OK, here's the story. This is obviously struck by a cancelled die. In fact, this is one of the 2 oz tokens Ash had struck with the mated 84-CC pair he bought at the ANA. I did an 'About VAMs' column on the dies right after the show. I've had the dies in hand. The pic is from the ANA. After the tokens were struck from these, the die faces were shiny again, which makes sense, because that's a lot of metal flow across their surface during coining. It got me thinking about where the patina from the die face went,. I strongly suspected it would have been embedded as debris in the first few pieces struck from the encrusted dies. At FUN, Ash had the first struck piece and some of the early strikes. His Number 1 piece has a bunch of little spots that are struck thru retained patina. I purchased this example, the 15th piece stuck, specifically for the fairly big chunk of retained patina on the surface of the chisel cancellation
'Struck thru retained patina' is a fairly unique type of feature I doubt I'll ever see again.

Ok, that’s a pretty cool strike thru! Glad you get to keep some of the history of the die lol

[Tekkie1]

That's actually quite amazing.
I haven't even heard of such a thing.
Has to have been some "thick patina".

Thanks for sharing JR.

[vamnuke]

[alefzero]

Yeah, not likely to be seen again. The Mint wouldn't typically restrike using dies sitting on the shelf for 137 years. Very cool.