In the case of Roman Booteen, observing this rule is quite easy. What Booteen did in a few weeks took an international team of experts nearly 18 months to reproduce.

Roman helped us get started by providing an early trap mechanism prototype, as the original $10,000 Trap Coin wasn’t going to be dismantled. They sent the mechanism to engineers in Australia and Lichtenstein for evaluation. While the consensus was that replicating the design was possible, it wouldn’t be easy on such a very small scale. Increasing the size of the model would be the only way to easily replicate the Trap Coin, but that was out of the question. First, we wanted to make the replica as close to the original model as possible, and that meant using Morgans and Dos Pesos. Second, so much of the intrigue of Booteen’s coin is how very tiny it is, and the painstaking microscopic precision required to piece it together..

12 months and 40 computer-aided designs, 3d prints and prototype casts later, they finally had a working trap. But the trap was nothing like the Booteen’s grizzly teeth. In fact, it was a dull mechanical knock-off, that lacked all signs of creativity.

That’s where the digital artist & Zbrush genius Ghim Ong took up the task. Once we knew we had a working set of jaws, Ghim carefully studied Roman’s original design, and modified the working trap 3d design, adding the life-like details found on the original. What Roman did in a few hours took weeks of design work to reproduce, and another several rounds of 3d prints and prototypes to test, tweak, and fit it all together.

Once they had a designed & functioning trap, it was time to fit it all together.

The next challenge was to design a doming die and block that would accommodate the trap while not leaving extra space for shifting or misalignment. If the Morgan was domed too shallow, the device stick out the top. If it was domed too deep, we’d run the risk of the trap not fitting inside the bowl.

After a serious of miscalculations, they settled on a dome radius and set to work on designing the tool that would render such a result. And while making a single coin could be done by hand on a simple doming block, we needed something that would hold up for nearly a thousand coins!

As luck would have it, we got the formula right the first time! The doming turned out great on our little hydraulic press, putting us one step closer to achieving the impossible.

Unfortunately, the corners of the trap brace were way outside the radius limits. Ghim made the correction, another prototype was printed and cast, and for the very first time, we put all the pieces together.

With the new brace cast, the mint tracked down some Dos Pesos and got to work assembling the replica. With all the pieces of the puzzle fine-tuned, it only took a few hours from there to complete the first official prototype, bringing tears to the eyes of our exhausted team.

The final step was to seal the trap to the Morgan, which was the perfect task for our 30 watt fiber laser welder. With the precision to lay down a thin layer of silver exactly where it needs to go comes a lot of heat, and the tiny springs inside the trap are incredibly sensitive to high temperatures. So, to generate a minimum amount of heat, we could only laser weld a tiny 3mm section of the coin at a time – allowing the material to cool for 30 minutes between welds. Sealing a single trap coin alltogether requires more than 10 hours!

But with all said and done, the Roman Booteen’s Trap Coin with the Golden Bait – the officially licensed Silver Hobo Nickel replica – is a true modern art and engineering marvel. While our team was able to reproduce it – at a cost of more than $20,000 and 18 months of time – it makes one thing abundantly clear:

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