This debris includes dust, clothing fibers, hair fragments, hair oil, and dandruff. A flake of dandruff consists of approximately ten to thirty human cells. If the comb is authentic and the dandruff is Lincoln's, these cells could potentially provide a large and readily obtainable source of the president's "earthly remains."

The comb is made from vulcanized rubber, an early semi-synthetic plastic.

Plastics are often considered a recent invention, but natural plastics such as rubber, amber, and shellac have been in use for centuries. Charles Goodyear obtained a patent in 1844 for vulcanized rubber, the first semi-synthetic plastic:

The subscriber has invented, or discovered, a Metallic Gum Elastic Composition. He is prepared to demonstrate, by ocular and irresistible evidence, that this Gum Elastic Composition possesses extraordinary and valuable qualities.... (PEIRCE 219)

For the first time in Europe, [Goodyear] exhibited articles of household furniture made of hard rubber, musical instruments, and India rubber globes of great beauty, inflated with air or gas, from twelve inches to three, and even six, feet in diameter, floating in the air, besides several other useful or ornamental applications of the same material... These rubber goods were placed in an elegantly constructed suite of open rooms, made of hard rubber, ornamented with handsome carvings, carpeted and furnished with articles of the same material. (PEIRCE 168)