Quiz: What do you see in this micrograph?

Please fill in the correct responses

1. Lumps from the tips of the edge reeds.
2. flat rim.
3.
4.
5.
6.

 

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I am not nearly as schooled in errors/varieties..... But if I saw that my knee-jerk reaction is a cracked die.

 

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3: Die crack becoming a die break near the rim.
4: Pronounced radial flow lines
5: Possible rusted die
6: Retained Lamination

 

I'll add - Planchet defect.
Possible struck through (wood?) debris still on coin?

 

Aerial view of dried up Great Salt Lake and a stream running into it..

 

A die crack will leave a raised line on the surface of a coin. The line in the photo looks incuse, I think it could be a planchet flaw.

 

Looks like a strike thru, but of course, I could be wrong.

 

You guys are a tough class. @Insider asks what you see, and most of you jump right past that question to the next one, “what do you think caused it?”. I am curious about the original; what do you see?

3. I see that the flat rim drops straight down to the field without any apparent curvature where the rim raises from the field.
4. I see lots of radial lines of short length. They are not smoothed so they look untouched.
5. I see some brown coloring. It could be toning or staining. I won’t guess which at this point.
6. I see a small lump inside the rim just right of top dead center. Intriguingly, it has the same brown color.
7. I see a raised funnel-shaped area with the broad side at the rim and coming to a point as it comes towards the interior of the coin. I surmise it is raised because the lighting throws a shadow on the right edge.
8. I see a ragged edge outlining the raised area. That ragged line appears to continue further into the coin. It appears recessed because the lighting creates a shadow in the interior of this feature. Also, the short sharp lines (the flow lines) do not appear to intersect this ragged line, so it appears to be lower than those surface features.

Yes, the ragged crack looks like a planchet flaw that was initially more rough, but struck flatter by the die impact. The raised area looks like a more pronounced lamination error that was peeling apart. When the die hit it some of the roughness was flattened out. Some of the adjacent material was pushed into the crack from both sides to give a more rounded appearance at the edges of the crack. Like so: )(

It’s hard not to draw some conclusions. It’s easier to be right if I just report what I see, than if I do start to try to explain the why and how.

 

expat, posted: 4: Pronounced radial flow lines.



RonSanderson, posted: 7793157, member: 77413"]You guys are a tough class. @Insider asks what you see, and most of you jump right past that question to the next one, “what do you think caused it?”. I am curious about the original; what do you see?

4. I see lots of radial lines of short length. They are not smoothed so they look untouched.
5. I see some brown coloring. It could be toning or staining. I won’t guess which at this point.
7. I see a raised funnel-shaped area with the broad side at the rim and coming to a point as it comes towards the interior of the coin.


Plus flat rim.
Partial edge reeds (lumps)

ONE MORE thing(very obvious) to see. Then ID the raised funnel-shape area that is the major characteristic and subject in this quiz.