Anyone Else Think This One Has Been Cleaned? PCGS

OP, I would say that it is probably dipped and most likely well circulated. Any TPG can make mistakes, they see thousands of coins at a time and don't have hours to pour over every coin.

Done right, you can't tell a coin has been dipped. Nobody in their right mind dips a circulated coin, although that's no guarantee this one hasn't. I just object to the idea of taking these images as Gospel regarding the surfaces, because they're not good enough.

There must be some "crazy" EAC dealers out there, then. While perhaps not a common practice, I have heard that some of them will "strip" an early copper, using silver dip, then retone the piece. Also, I hear tell that there's a most sought after restorer (cleaner) of early coppers on the west coast whose restorations command in the thousands from rare copper dealers. He's that good ...

IMHO, the 1895-S $1 has likely been dipped. Buy the coin, not the slab. To my thinking, the PCGS holder helps give some assurance of the coin being genuine, but that's about as far as it goes. They can err on the genuineness of a coin, too.

The great majority of our early coins have been "cleaned" or conserved in some way or another, these past hundred years or so. It's the obvious cleaning that typically commands our attention, methinks.

Dipped.... out. Market graded. The TPGs have a much higher tolerance level for better-date coins like that.

ET