Topic: Casascius hologram issue (Read 2738 times)

Oh WOW that is awesome. Would be very interesting to find out more. Also intriguing that the marks are actually under the hologram...
Keep us posted and thanks for sharing.

This coin is now in the hands of someone with actual brains and access to a high powered Laica microscope that can capture pretty images.  I have looked at the holo under power and it is interesting!  Here is the tentative plan:
 
- We will be imagine the holo monthly for the next 3-6 months to ascertain if the marks are growing in size\population or if they are static.
- Once we have observed the marks over time we are going to peel it and image the marks under the holo as best we can.
- We will import the private key to confirm the coin is authentic(it looks real to me).

At some point I expect to be posting high quality images, I can tell you the images I have seen are very good, under power you can see that the marks look exactly like the letters "ONE BITCOIN" on the holo, as if whatever process made the one bitcoin letters may have been responsible for the marks we see.  I can say at this point the marks are under the surface of the hologram.

I'll update as I learn more and when I get images, they are currently in a file format not suitable for posting.

TBH my first thought upon seeing this is that the adhesive is oxidizing the silver.

I always assumed that gold or silver would eventually become discolored from the acid in the adhesive. Strange how it only took 2-3 years for it to start voiding itself. Maybe compressing the holo side will help prevent this?

..snip (WoT)

It will be interesting to see then, in the coming months and years ahead, how Holo's generally fair across the range of physical coins that were subsequently made after Mike made the process public.

The variables are indeed many and hopefully, as time moves on, there will be a or some common factors arising that may enable a clearer idea of what is causing these issues

I agree it boils down to two categories of factors (with numerous variables):

1. The assembly process

2. the holograms themselves were slightly made different in production in terms of quality consistency etc.

If I had to guess it sounds more like an aging process of the coins as I remember opening up my roll when I initially got them and never saw one of those dots until many months later.

This is my own personal experience with the coins I am sharing and am in no way claiming to be an expert at all. All I can do is speak from my experience with Mike's coins as well as my experience with dealing with holograms on my own coins that are months and years old which have not had that issue.

Obviously something is different, what that is to me is a mystery thus far.

I covered the Silvers above by acknowledging that they appear to have marked a change in process of manufacture. However, manual handling of the Priv key AND the holo,  by multiple persons, appears NOT to have changed (Mike can clarify?). So even if the Silver coins are treated and handled with utmost care AND with gloves, the keys and holos were not, ergo the perfect entry point for chemicals.
If two persons body grease/sweat mix it can create additional chemicals which can have a noticeable impact. This is well known.

In light of the video itself, I believe there's now compelling evidence indicating that the manual elements of production are a very likely contender for being the cause of the issues currently being faced by Coin owners.

Again, I think Mike is probably the one best placed to highlight production issues of the time.

What  was the humidity in the room like?
Room Temperature?
Were people hot/warm/cold while working?
Had the room been recently decorated?
Had anyone had pizza that day, afternoon, evening? (you get the idea)


There are so many variables possible during production that, if you have satisfied yourselves that the slabs absolutely cannot be the issue, then by axiom the creation process MUST play a more significant part in the investigation.

Currently, all evidence points to production as the weak point and most likely cause of dots and spotting. It may be the Holos themselves at the point of THEIR manufacture.
Am I correct in thinking that the paper used for priv keys was removed from the list of culprits?
Viz

If this was the case for his 2013 silver coins then there would be noticeable finger prints on the coins which there werent.

When dealing with silver coins it is difficult to apply the entire process without adding finger prints to the silver coins without using gloves.

Brass not so much (even though I tend to use gloves for those as well).

It would seem the finger print issue is not the cause of it as it would be obviously visible on the surface of his silver coins from 2013.

The manufacture of Silver coins appears to mark a change in some of the processes as Mike clearly didn't want blemishes on the nice shiny silver coins. As such, manufacturing appears to have had a more thoughtful sequence where handling is concerned and the related issues would have been mitigated by gloves and better processes. Maybe Mike could qualify the above?

Just my 2 cents

I like your thinking viz. The amount of times coins must have been handled back then whilst going through the assembly process must be high. These were not that valuable back then, so I can see why this happened. This occurrence of spots may very well be because of oils and residue left behind after assembling.

When watching a video of Mike making the coins once, I saw bare hands/fingers being used to place the Holo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NyzDY7NUOo
^^
your answer?

Seems the manufacturing process was NOT sterile - Note the upload date. Use this as a reference for coins where the holo is at issue. Coins around this period included ?


QUOTE
A short clip of applying holograms to Casascius physical bitcoins. Helpers are placing private keys from a jar onto the coins and also peeling the holograms onto transfer tape. Another helper puts the coins on a flatbed scanner for later identification and funding."

Thats a LOT of handling....

People have been so focussed on the Slabs and capsules yet it seems sensible to wind back to the very start of the creation process and look for early issues.
To the point that a coin has even yet to be struck. How were the blanks handled? How were they moved around? How many hands/fingers touched them throughout the lifecycle of creation? etc etc. Think like that and I believe you will find you answers far faster

No disrespect to Mike in any way, but he wasn't the Royal Mint. I would describe the process of his creating coins as semi pro hobby craft in the early days. Issues would easily creep in as appears to be the case with the early coins and their holos.

This is likely not the case as the CASASCIUS coins I had resided in the plastic rolls Mike sent to me and were never stored in any other container and some still had those dots.

Pretty sure it aint PVC.

He used an epilog mini, which I too have to laser coins/etc.

I have coins I ring melted from my own collection safely stored and there is no spots despite melting the ring of the hologram.

Then again my holograms aren't 100% identical so not sure if it has to do with any number of factors.

Is it possible that the surface of the coin under the hologram is slightly different and would allow such a thing to happen to some coins and not others? That is a possibility.

The coins I had were never graded and these dots were on there.

I still think it is an aging process that causes them.

To be clear there were "dots" but not as many as you have here nor as obviously viewable as in the images you shared.

I've had seen this with coins I had that I sold.

Nothing alarming to me about it. I got mine directly from Mike so perhaps it is an aging process?

Can't say I've seen anything like that with my holograms though.

No, it's a mircosoul.  I only took one pic (to show Gravitas) before I redeemed it....wish I took a better one.  At the time I didn't think too much about....but now it gives me concern for the rest of my physical coins...

Here is one on ebay...not mine.  The last pic is a good one of what the hologram should look like 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Only-28-MicroSoul-Loaded-05-Silver-Bit-coin-654-Casascius-Physical-Rare-Coin-/122045527165?hash=item1c6a7af47d:g:NPgAAOSwM4xXcYJn

Damn, you're having some awfully bad luck with your coins Is that a CryptoImperator hologram?

Anyone want to do some testing on what caused this?  It's a different issue than the casascius spotting but a hologram integrity issue nonetheless.  This a pic prior to redemption.  I peeled halfway and the private key was unaffected.

Pre-redemption:



Post-redemption: