Robert Barnett, chief clerk of the San Francisco Mint, has led numismatic writers Nancy Oliver and Richard Kelly to speculate that he may have been made an assay commissioner in order to retrieve the dime. The 1895 Assay Commission report confirms that the dime was there, as it was counted by the Counting Committee. The dime is not mentioned as having been either weighed or assayed; Oliver and Kelly, in a May 2011 article in The Numismatist, suggest that Barnett used that privilege of assay commissioners to obtain the rarity. He is not known, however, to have written or spoken of the matter before his murder in 1904. In 1964, former assay commissioners formed the Old Time Assay Commissioners Society (OTACS). When President Carter stopped appointing public members to the commission in 1977, the OTACS fundraised in an unsuccessful attempt to induce the government to continue that tradition. The society met annually through 2012, usually at the site of the yearly convention of the American Numismatic Association (ANA). With the number of surviving OTACS members at less than three dozen, the society plans no further meetings; its 2012 session in conjunction with the ANA convention in Philadelphia included an event at the mint. Medals Assay Commission medals were struck from a variety of metals, including copper, silver, bronze, and pewter. The first Assay Commission medals were struck in 1860 at the direction of Mint Director James Ross Snowden. The initial purpose in having medals struck was not principally to provide keepsakes to the assay commissioners, but to advertise the Mint's medal-striking capabilities. The nascent custom lapsed when Snowden left office in 1861. Numismatists R.W. Julian and Ernest E. Keusch, in their work on Assay Commission medals, theorize that the resumption of Assay Commission medal striking in 1867 was at the request of Mint Engraver James B. Longacre to new Mint Director William Millward. Medals to be given to assay commissioners were struck each year after that until public members ceased to be appointed to the Assay Commission in 1977. Early assay medals featured on the obverse a bust of Liberty or figure of Columbia, and on the reverse a wreath surrounding the words "" and the year. The 1870 obverse, by Longacre's successor William Barber, features Moneta surrounded by implements of the assay, such as scales and the pyx. The distinctive designs for each year would sometimes be topical—the 1876