Today and tomorrow I will start getting the medals ready for shipment.
Some explanation is probably in order as to why some things came out the way they did.
The 39mm "proof-like" medals have a fair amount of "cartwheel" luster and they look somewhat like the brilliant satin version (although side-by-side the difference is apparent).
Once again I had difficulty getting the rims of the 39mm medals to strike up. That has always been an issue since 2007. I have concluded that it has to do with the design around the rim that has been used since the beginning. I think it may be time to change that for the next medal. To get the rims to strike up, the striking force required was pretty high. This caused a lot of stress on the dies and even though the 39mm dies had a full proof polish on them (in the fields), from the very first strike onward there was significant flow lines forming.
For the first time I tried a different antiquing process on the 39mm brass medals and it was successful (and easier than previous methods).
The 39mm silver medals tend to be about a gram overweight, although they are still edge-marked "ONE TROY OZ . 999 SILVER".
When rolling out the silver for the 50mm medals I made an error and went a little bit too far. So the 50mm stock was about 10% thinner than originally planned. I had considered re-melting it all and rolling it out again. But I decided to proceed with the initial rolled stock. It is probably a good thing that I did because things were at the absolute maximum thickness that I could strike and still be able to eject from the collar. Any thicker and there would have been problems making them. So the 50mm medals ended up being about 10% lighter than the 100-grams that was originally advertised (about 92 grams on average). They are still a nice heavy "chunky" medal. They are simply marked on edge "999 SILVER". To make up for the weight difference I decided to apply a holographic effect to the 50mm medals. The 2016 Merlin medals had that. Those were actually better-suited for the hologram process than the 2019 Witch medals because the 2016 Merlin medals had a sunken relief with the fields up high where they could be easily be burnished with the holographic shim (more on how that it is done below). For the 2019 Witch medals I had to do the holographic burnishing down in the open areas between the spiral arcs. The holographic treatment would not have worked so well on the 39mm medals because they are smaller and there isn't enough space between the spiral arcs.
In 2011 I first had the idea of applying a hologram to a medal. I contracted with a company that makes holograms for credit cards. I wanted holograms that were roughly 3-inches square. I did not want any specific image so I requested a generic "starburst" image which looks like a compact disc. The one-time "mastering" for that image was a bout $2,500. Then each sheet, consisting of six 3-inch square holograms was about $250 per sheet. I had initially ordered five sheets (30 holograms). As of the recent striking I had two left. I was able to apply the holographic effect to all the 50mm medals using one of my remaining two, while also utilizing some small scraps I had left over (so I now have one in-tact hologram left).
This is how the hologram works:
A steel master is created which has a highly-polished (very smooth) surface. A special laser process forms extremely small peaks and valleys on the steel surface. The distances between the peaks and valleys is similar to the wavelengths of visible light. So light waves reflected off that surface are locally cancelled or reinforced. This forms the hologram image. The steel master is what cost $2,500 in my case. The steel master is treated like a master hub - it is pressed into relatively thin sheets of polished nickel to transfer the peaks and valleys of the steel surface into the nickel surface. Now the nickel surface shows the hologram. Each 3-inch square nickel hologram is called a shim. All I have to do then is lay a shim over a medal (with the hologram side facing the medal) and rub the back of the nickel shim with a small tool so as to locally transfer the peaks and valleys of the shim onto the silver medal. It is a little more difficult than it sounds. Because the nickel is a little harder than the silver, it works (for a little while). But the shims get stretched, warped, and faded pretty quickly. With the process that I use, there is no polymer coating or anything. Some "hologram" coins out there in the market are actually just foil stickers stuck on the coin. In my process, the hologram is part of the silver surface texture. If a medal were "dipped", the hologram would not be adversely affected. However, if the medal was ever polished or cleaned abrasively, or the silver was etched by some process (such as heavy tarnish), the hologram image would generally fade or vanish. So think of my hologram process as "magic luster". Like any coin, if there is abrasion and/or wear to the surface, the mint luster in that area is gone. The same applies to the holographic effect.
