I am having the same issue described at this address http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/cocoa/288659-iphone-nsmanagedobjectcontext-save-doesn-crash-but-breaks-on-objc-excep
I had a similar problem, eventually it turned out to be because of an observer of NSManagedObjectContextDidSaveNotification that was deallocated without removing itself from the notification center. It seems that the CoreData exception "hides" the unknown selector exception that is raised when the notification center tries notifying whatever object occupies the memory freed by the registered (but deallocated) observer.