1909-S IHC Recolored?

Perhaps I am missing something here, but I do not see how this coin could be called "ravaged". It likely was dipped at some point, this I can go with. But ravaged? What makes this coin so abused? Tell me just what you are seeing that causes you to say that.

DV, fair enough. To my eye the coin simply looks to have been dipped at some point. But I have been fooled by pics before. But thanks for the explanation. I've been doing this a long time, but I like to find out why someone grades a coin differently than I do. that way I can learn more.

BTW, I want that coin you have for an avatar. I have been looking for an Athena ancient for my wife for a while. One that wont cost me half an arm. LOL

I know this was mentioned already, but the diamonds do look funky. The bottom one looks absolutely terrible!

I suspect the diamonds are normal--sometimes the inner part gets beveled, possibly due to ejection from the die. If the diamonds were tooled, they would probably tool the incomplete one too, which I think is due to wear.

Since the auction pics might go away, I have archived the obverse with some observations. I would call this coin EF details, because flattening is evident on the ribbon, brow, and cheek. Normally with an EF coin, surface chatter on the face and fields should have sharp points where metal was moved, because it did not see enough circulation to wear these points down. If you look closely on this coin, even the smallest chatter shows bright, beveled edges (dark arrows), which tells me that metal has been removed. This coin may have been cleaned to remove corrosion, which sill remains in recessed areas around the bust (light arrows). To the right of the feathers, there may be marks created by harsh cleaning with a wire brush. An EF IHC should show some evidence of mint surfaces in protected areas of the fields, but the fields look bright (and flat) everywhere.

Just my observations here, but I think one could approximate this look by taking a (cheap) bronze coin like an EF LWC with surface chatter, polishing with an abrasive like Brasso, and leaving alone to re-tone for some time.

I would suspect that in 30/40 years the fact that there was only 309,000 minted will outway any cleaning done. As our population grows, so will the quantity of coin collectors. Even now there are possibly millions of coin collectors so in the future, any coin of that mintage, cleaned or not will be worth a lot more than what that one went for.
And many dealers know that so they continue to clean and/or polish and or dip coins. Even now there is always someone that will buy them. Note that this one sold.

CCF has some very knowledgeable people, some Lincoln Cent collectors, some Indian head collectors Morgan dollars, etc, it is just great to be able to look at all these posts and help all us collectors out with this information.

It's so obvious that his coins are cleaned and re-colored, yet he's getting big bids for his stuff. Go figure !