A "Frosted" Strike is one where the raised "Devices" or Designs stand out against the mirror-like background of the "Field" or Flat Area as the "Devices" are White in Color and Rough in Texture. In the Coin Collecting Hobby, "Frosted" would be referred to as "Cameo" or "Deep Cameo" or "Ultra Cameo" - all ways to describe this effect of a White Textured Finish on the raised Designs helping to make them "jump out" against the polished flat surfaces.

These terms usually apply to Proof Coins & Silver Strikes which have the following characteristics:
1) The Mint sandblasted the raised areas of the Dies (to create this effect) before any coins/tokens were Struck, and
2) The Coin or Strike was one of the earliest ones Struck of a given design using a given Die Pair.

Over a period of time, with multiple strikings of the same design on a single Die Pair, the "rough" texture on the Die "Device" areas is worn smooth by the impact of the many Strikings that have preceded the ones later being struck. Once the "rough" surface of the Die "Devices" area has been worn smooth, the Strikes produced off that Die Pair now have smooth surfaces on the Devices -- to the point where both the Device and Field Surfaces end up with about the same smooth surface, with only the "raised" characteristic of the Devices distinguishing them from the Fields.

To my knowledge, most (almost all?) Strikes INITIALLY are minted with a Heavily Frosted Finish, with those coming out slightly later with a Lightly Frosted Finish, followed by essentially no "Frost" at all for the later ones (the bulk of the Strikes produced with a given pair of Dies when those Dies are used for a particularly long period of time).

Hope that helps.

PS - I am not an expert (I just know enough to be dangerous), so this explanation might be off a bit.

David W.
SS-1044