Incredible 1943 Tombac Retained Die Break

When I first joined the CCF I almost exclusively hung out in the variety and errors forum... As time marched on and my collecting interests evolved I kept my love for errors but moved on to collecting other things. This is one of the few errors I still own and it is one of the coolest pieces I've seen. Check out how especially on the letters you can see that the broken part of the die had already shifted away from the rest of the die a little. As far as I know this piece is currently the only one floating around.. I find it hard to believe that there aren't others out there, perhaps hiding somewhere. I picked this up at auction a few years ago and have never seen one since. As a younger collector it was hard to swallow the price of around $200 but now I'm very happy that I didn't let it slip through my fingers

The crack itself is very thick and extremely high in some places, it appears to actually be higher than the rim at its peak.. The die is also so close to falling apart that one part is actually raised compared to the other meaning that it was sinking away from the rest of the die's face.