@evan There's a great version of this in the mini-series The Lost Room, where there are a series of "Objects" with odd powers. One of them is a pencil which if you tap the eraser against a hard surface, a penny appears. I did a calculation based on how fast I could tape a pencil at a rate I could reasonably sustain and then checked the weight and metal composition for that year's penny's (it always produces an identical penny). The I checked the melt value.