Out of this world trail dies?

[NearDateHound]

I ordered several of the Apollo 40th anniversary medals with metal in them that flew to the moon on the Apollo missions. Found here: http://www.thespaceshop.com/40thmedallion.html These are going to make a few friends who are fans of the space program very happy come the holiday season. Of course as soon as they got here I checked them out under my specimen scope. What do I see but something that looks suspiciously similar to trail dies on 3 of the 5 I got on the "NASA" logo side of them.

With that kind of percentage I'm guessing it's likely a side effect of the manufacturing process and not strictly speaking a "trail die" but all the trails seem to be coming off of hard edges/corners, of which in much of it there are a plethora. Also, all the "trails" are going in the same direction on the coin. The angle varies between coins, but the direction is uniform on each. Went a little arrow happy, but it can be very difficult to tell what in a closeup a person is looking at, so I erred on the side of caution.

First one. First image are two large trails coming off the points of the N in NASA. Second is the stars under the N. Third is the stars inside the top part of the ellipse in the logo, fourth is the stars above same.

Will do one post each for the other two.

[NearDateHound]

Number 2.

First image is the N again, with the "trails" in a very similar direction to medal 1.
Second image is the stars above the upper part of the ellipse

Three and four are an interesting feature of these medals. Due to manufacturing, the alloy, something, they go from somewhat dark to reflective depending on the rotation of the coin relative to the way you're looking at it. It's hard to explain the effect, it's somewhat like looking through a polarized lens and rotating it. Image 3 is the "shiny" version and image 4 is the "dark" version.

[NearDateHound]

Last but not least, number 3.

Image 1 is the N again, this time a very different angle of "trail" relative to the other two.
Image 2 is the spot near the top of the logo.
Image 3 and 4 are under the N, "dark" and "shiny" respectively.

They're much fainter near the top of the logo on this one, I had to work to even get that much clarity on them.

I know they're really close up and hard to figure their position relative to the rest of the design, if better pictures are needed let me know.

Trail die? Not sure, I'll leave that to BJ. Definitely something going on with them that's not on the other 2 so I had to share.

[coin-crazy]

HEY--> Hound...Great find.Looks like a sweet trail die to me. This my be a first?

[NearDateHound]

Told you I had something special up my sleeve. I have enough questions as to how many of these they're making (thus how many dies used) and how they're making them (they're very high relief and of what seems to be an odd alloy) that I'm not exactly confident in calling it a "trail die" and am leaning to maybe being a byproduct of however they're being made.

You can see in image 2 of post 3 that the lettering around the edge has some interesting things going on, the incuse section of the middle of the M is not consistent across all the strikes, and there is one of the ones I got in which the lettering all looks like the field between the lettering and logo of same. Almost like the lettering on the die was pitted on all of the letters, I may get some shots of those as well.

Without more information on how they're made I'm skeptical, hopefully either someone here will know or I can trip across the information with enough googling.

[wavysteps]

If at all possible, I would very much like to see these medals. Please contact me at traildies.com if you will.

BJ Neff

[NearDateHound]

I sent you email, hopefully I can get these out to you today.

[NearDateHound]

Just got email from BJ, who's had a chance to look at them in hand. He's confirmed that they are trail dies and will be listing them at traildies.com. Perhaps the depth of relief on them explains the seemingly longer trails on some elements of them, as the hub and die would have had more time in contact with each other. Might have to order another group of them to see if there are a bunch more in that batch or if I just really lucked out with my first order.

[wavysteps]

Thought that I would post this picture of trails on the stars; they are now comets (LOL).

BJ Neff

[NearDateHound]

It definitely gives them the feel of being comets, totally appropriate for the medal.

Minor correction of the listing on the web page, the last name is spelled "Kruelski". May have been put in wrong at the package store, I remember the gentleman asking about the spelling of it twice.

And I hadn't noticed the trails on the lettering, well spotted.

[NearDateHound]

Another 5 ordered, another 3 with trail dies, one being pretty spectacular. Also one of the non-trail ones has what seems to be a pellet of the metal used in the rim. Pictures to come when I have a chance to get them, they just got delivered and I've had exactly enough time to go over them under the scope.