Thats fair. What about this? Nickel T1 | One Drop YoYos | Flickr
That does look like pyramatte haha! Could be the grain of the photo maybe but yeah looks like pyramatte! Most nickel throws do not look like that!
Why would this be an argument I can 100% be wrong
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Looks blasted, same as the rebirth.
Nickel Summit | One Drop YoYos | Flickr this summit definitely looks polished.
And here’s a ‘polished nickel plated Vanguard’ for reference:
Edit: note that this photo was taken by David. Photos taken by Paul will look a bit different because Paul always used completely different settings on his camera which make everything look darker and more dramatic.
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Polished I guess also could be misleading as you can polish nickel and copper after plating to really make them sparkle. I still think that some of these could be pyramatte, just because of how easy/passive it is to ensure they’re being cleaned. Polished before plating could still have residue on them, and cleaning would be another step after, and it takes significant amount of effort to do it by hand if it’s not automated or passive like throwing them in a tumbler. If OD did polish them, why wouldn’t we see some polished anno example from them in their catalogue in addition to pyramatte?
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Here’s another nickel example I found while searching. What do you just think, polished, blasted or tumbled? 
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Absolutely blasted 
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@LouVanLanning could you look into their process/pros and cons of pyramatte vs polished vs blasted as you are doing your archive project?
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Pretty sure that’s a stone wash, actually.
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Definitely! I am going down there on Thursday. From my understanding blasting is just too messy, time consuming, and expensive compared the the pyramatte tumbling process. A lot of more aggressive blasts require masking around the catch zone to avoid string cutting. @zxin posted a photo recently that showed the original masking pieces that were machined to mask original MMCs. It was a very labor intensive process. Blasting also requires someone to stand there and do the blasting, where as (I think) tumbling only requires loading the machine and letting it run. As a mostly two person operation it makes sense to use the processes that save the most time while also yielding a good result. I’m sure @da5id could also enlighten us!
I was also curious about that. Zooming in on promotional pictures, they definitely have that pyramatte look from the start.
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Anyone know how much Lab Experiments retailed for or where?
cc OD encyclopedia @fradiger
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this is one i do not know sadly..
based off bst pricing one was listed very quickly after its release in december 2011 for $75, with another one a few months later for $125 which dropped to $105 shipped, probably around $70-80?
one of those posts the author states they were “lucky to get one when they dropped” which makes me guess it was direct through the onedrop store
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Are there any kind souls out there who’ve been subscribed to One Drop’s newsletter for a long long time who’d be willing to collate those emails and send them to me as an archive? (e.g. .zip)
I’m asking because some of those emails contain useful historical information (e.g. retail prices) that aren’t mentioned in the related Flickr/Instagram/Facebook posts. Unfortunately I only subscribed to their newsletter last year, so I don’t have any newsletter emails older than that. 
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