A-mark Slabbed $20 Saint- Does anyone know what these weird circles are?
PeakRarities
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PeakRarities
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Die scratches or I think they are called "Trail Dies"?
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
Check it out - found the website:
http://www.traildies.com/
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
So all those round little dimples are test marks?
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Hardness test marks crossed my mind, but all of the marks vary in size, consistency and depth. I had figured it was just some sort of damage, but i'm getting thrown off by the large one on the "E" in "twenty".
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I looked through some of those photos, but I'm not seeing anything similar to the circular dimples that appear on the saint.
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OHHHHH, thought you were talking about the raised lines on the coin - My bad!
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
If the $20 coin was an Indian coin I would say that the round marks are "shroff" marks.
Shroff's were Indian money changers who would drill into silver coins to make sure they were real.
An example:
Mughal Rupee, Shah Jahan, AH 1038 (AD 1629), First year
Silver, 22 mm, 10.47 gm, KM 222.1
Struck at the Agra Mint, later the site of Shah Jahan's famous Taj Mahal.
The Mysterious Egyptian Magic Coin
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are they PVC blebs from the holder?
Hardness test marks. Not entirely common, but not entirely uncommon either. The difference in sizes probably means they were checked more than once at different trading desks.
Not what I'd call a "basement slab" either. A-Mark has been around for a long time, and '84 was before PCGS and NGC (and before ANACS started putting anything in holders).
“We are only their care-takers,” he posed, “if we take good care of them, then centuries from now they may still be here … ”
Todd - BHNC #242
AMark is legit in the bullion world.
Thank you for the infinite wisdom as always, pursuit. Forgive my naïveté about A-mark, that was long before my time and i'm now conditioned to call anything that's not one of the usual suspects a "basement slab" lol. I changed the title as well.
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Look like blobs of PVC inside the holder.
"infinite wisdom"
... or some random facts that seem to stick in our heads after a while!!
For just bullion ... kind of cool!
“We are only their care-takers,” he posed, “if we take good care of them, then centuries from now they may still be here … ”
Todd - BHNC #242
I agree with the captain. They are not Rockwell test marks, and I believe it’s the PVC plastic blobs
that you see on coin, or at least the photo of the coin - I knew Jeff Bergelt at Amark and he knew his gold - the coin is genuine with no errors or test marks, etc..
The slabs are actually soft PVC which was used because it's easy to heat seal and those blobs are oil that migrated out of the PVC. The oil was used as a softener for the PVC which is naturally a hard stiff plastic. I have a couple of those slabs with this same feature and when you press on the soft plastic slab, these tiny blobs of oil will move and change shape. A-Mark is a legitimate precious metal company with a good reputation and these slabs are from an era when PVC was still being widely used. We now know that long term storage in PVC can damage coins although gold coins seem to be immune to damage from storage in these slabs.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
Very interesting analysis in several ways. Have a good day. Peace Roy
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I believe what you are seeing is simply PVC in the holder. They are degraded droplets of the holder that are now on the coin and will likely damage it over time.
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