Maybe.. but I would be more convinced if you took it out of the 2x2 and blew all the lint off the surface.
Actually if you are careful you will not break the plastic but I guess otherwise we will never know for sure. Could be thread or a wire bristle. Could be loose, could be imbedded. Oh, the pain of it all...
You don't have to crack open the case. Just strike the edge of the case on a hard surface and see if the thread (?) shifts its position. It doesn't have to move much, so you might need to compare the placement with your current images. Chris
There are a couple of things making me think it's a foreign object trapped inside the container. First, it's a different color than the coin itself, especially visible in the largest detail image. Second, if it were a piece of wire which got caught between die and planchet, it should be incuse on the coin, not a positive. The die would have pressed it into the planchet. Given the direction your lighting is coming from, the direction in which the feature casts a shadow proves that it's a positive on the surface of the coin. Since it's a positive, the only way for it to have been struck that way is if it were a negative on the die. Now, how could that happen? The wire - or whatever it is - would have to be stronger than the carefully-hardened steel of the die, some of the hardest steel imaginable, so that it would "win" the battle with the die and impress itself onto it. And here's the kicker: the planchet is far too weak to hold it solidly enough to be impressed into the die. There'd be nothing for the wire to "push" against. Unpossible. At least, that's what I see in the evidence presented here.
Looks like possibly a hub strike through. The "wire" or whatever it is was caught between the hardened steel hub and the soft steel die blank. That WOULD make the negative impression in the die and the raised image on the coin. SuperDave was on the right track, he just needed to go back one more step from coin creation to die creation.
open it, open it,open it,open it,open it,open it,open it,open it,open it,open it,open it,open it,open it,open it,open it,open it,open it,open it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'll concede the possibility. Wouldn't we have seen this before, if that were true? And where did the color come from? If it's an artifact of lighting, the glasses have the exact same shape and relief, and should have shown it too.
If you mean hub strikethroughs, they do exist but are seldom seen. Dies are examined before use and during use and hub strikethroughs rarely get into production and when they do are seldom in use for long. I don't understand the comment about the color, and it definitely isn't a result of the lighting. The lighting highlights show the feature is raised and it's surface texture seems to match that of the surrounding area.
