1892 Barber Half Dollar - For Grading

Looks like an AU coin. For all the issues you list, it appears to be details, but I have seen much worse in a straight grade holder. Maybe AU55. Hair and leaves appear weakly struck. Still a first year of the type and a chunky piece of silver.

I think it is just a circulated coin. Those marks do not look to me like what people called cleaned. Not that I understand or approve much of this details thing.

This is definitely an interesting one. Would love to see it in hand. Lean towards AU Details, but a great first year Barber!

AU Details--polished is my opinion. I don't think this coin came prooflike from the mint.

I snagged it and a few other halves in a "Dutch Auction" at an estate sale a couple years ago when silver was around $22-23/oz. I had the top bid at $11.25 21.25 per coin. That's the estate sale where I came home with a *few* bags of wheat cents. OK, it was more like 47 bags of wheat cents, but we won't talk about that.

EDIT: I need to check my posts with my reading glasses before clicking to post it. I paid $21.25, not $11.25. We didn't get the chance to inspect the halves before bidding, so I thought it was worth a risk to see what was in the box. I ended up taking a few of them home, this one and a late Walker and a couple Franklins that were generic UNCs.

I respectfully agree here in part and disagree here in part. The coin has been cleaned (abrasively, E-W on obverse and reverse), but it has not been polished. Whatever was used for the abrasive cleaning left long surface scratches across the devices and marred parts of the field.

The fields on the obverse are mirrored and did leave the mint that way, but the reflective depth is only 3/4" in the unmarred areas. The obverse devices are not mirrored at all, and show light frost in spots but not continuously. The reverse is the normal cartwheel, and the coin is only AU. For all of these reasons, it could never receive a prooflike designation, but it is the occasionally seen coin that we all called semi-prooflike back in the day. In that sense, it never was a prooflike coin, but was semi-prooflike on the obverse only. There are fully prooflike Barbers, mostly from New Orleans and San Francisco. They are not as common from Philadelphia, and I am not aware of any fully prooflike 1892 Barber half. Philadelphia did produce fully prooflike Columbus Halves and Isabella Quarters at about this same time as this coin, though.

My biggest hesitation here was trying to pin down a technical grade because of the absolutely awful strike quality. It seems like the consensus is 53-55-ish. I was more 50-53-ish.

IMHO this is AU details (cleaned), maybe with a little bit more eye appeal because of the semi-prooflike obverse, and that's maybe enough to offset the eye appeal loss because of the distracting carbon spots. It's value is the same as any other generic low/mid AU details 1892 Barber, and it obviously isn't something anybody would slab.

Thank you all for the input. It gives me an idea how to list it when I wholesale it out with my next batch of gotta-go coins. Thanks!