Odd copper thing

xphobe

What do you suppose this is? It's about the size of a quarter. I found it in a garage sale. It was in a 2x2 cardboard flip with no markings other than "$4.00" so I offered $2 for it.

Blackhawk

Cool! I have no idea of what it is though...maybe a toolroom chit or tag.

xphobe

Yes, it looks like a tag the way the numbers are pressed into the obverse, but there's no hole and it isn't exactly uniface.

The reverse is actually two different thicknesses. The top half above the line (I flipped it in coin rotation) is thicker than the bottom half. And it's slightly concave on the obverse, slightly convex on the reverse. Looks like a cob, and stamped between dies.

From the color it is definitely copper, not bronze (as far as I can tell without doing x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy). Also looks quite old...

ColinCMR

at first glance my impression was that is was struck by dripping a drop of the hot metal into water, then flattening and stamping the cooled metal. Similar to old Hungarian denars.