1853 A&r Seated Quarter - XF40 Or Border Au?

XF45 Details/cleaned

Bryan, that 1854 is a nice strong AU coin, no doubt about that. As to the the OP, I am still holding with my original feeling that the 1853 is an EF-40 details coin. Far too much wear on the eagles feathers and shield to give it a 45. I for one would not pay the fees to get this one slabbed as it will come back "genuine" without a grade.

I dont understand, are you upset with his opinion? He's just telling you what he thinks.

And I agree with Bryan about that example on Heritage you provided ... I think its pretty obvious that coin doesn't deserve AU anything, even to a newbie like me. Look at the amount of wear on the obverse. Besides this, its also not a good example because it was hand-picked by you which involves heavy selection bias. If it was picked by a third party, maybe, but still you'd really want to see 10-20 coins to get a good sample.

I wont give my opinion because I'm way too biased at this point but I think at minimum it would come back with rim damage.

Your coin is still a more desirable date/variety than the one I posted above and I only posted those pictures to show what I feel a true AU coin should look close to of this type. There are some exceptions where certain dates are known to have weak strikes but I don't think the A/R Seated quarters are one that falls into this category as I have not heard of them having weak a strike generally. When I made the statement of XF details I didn't mean it would come back in a problem holder, I was just commenting on what I thought the details of the coin deserved. I can never give a true opinion on what the TPG's will do about problem free or problem coins by pictures unless its blatantly obvious it has PMD without seeing the coin in hand. I have seen some rim problem coins that I thought would never grade (before the top TPG's other than ANACS started slabbing problem coins) and them come back in slabs so it all according to what kind of mood the graders are in on the day your coin goes across the desk. If you feel you want to get it graded after taking everyone's thoughts of the coin into consideration then by all means do what you feel you should do with the coin