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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 1976907, member: 27832&quot;]FWIW, two or three of the five I returned had a similar effect, mostly along the rim above Kennedy&#039;s head. When I realized that the same thing was happening on multiple coins, but not in identical distributions, I kind of stopped paying attention to it. It didn&#039;t look <i>exactly</i> like what&#039;s illustrated in the auction, but it&#039;s the same general idea -- frost creeping into the fields.</p><p><br /></p><p>I didn&#039;t do a great job of capturing it in photos, but this &quot;stray frost&quot; <i>does</i> look just like the frost on the devices -- same texture, same pit size, same optical properties as you shift the direction of illumination. It specifically does <i>not</i> look like foreign matter on the surface, hairlines, or contact marks.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Mint applies this &quot;frosting&quot; to each <i>die</i>, not the <i>hub</i>, as I understand it, so I guess it&#039;s not surprising that I saw different patterns on different coins -- if, as I&#039;ve read, they strike about 600 coins from each die, they&#039;d probably run through quite a few dies by the time the coins started shipping. I don&#039;t see this leading to &quot;variety&quot; designations, and I don&#039;t see it as desirable. I haven&#039;t gone through my other recent proof stuff to see if it&#039;s common in other issues.</p><p><br /></p><p>Again, I wasn&#039;t really trying to zero in on the effect when I was shooting the coins, and I don&#039;t have them now to try again, but here&#039;s what I can reconstruct from the photos I did take -- an overview and closeup of the effect on two different coins. (Sorry that the lighting wasn&#039;t the same for both, but trust me, the distribution was significantly different on these two coins.)</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]351876[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]351877[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]351878[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]351879[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>My overall reaction to it was more or less &quot;wow, the Mint&#039;s getting pretty sloppy&quot;. Between this and the smearing issue, I&#039;m feeling kind of negative about the Mint&#039;s current proof manufacturing process...[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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