1835 Capped Bust Dime - What Do You Think (PCGS)?

going with VF30. I'll leave the attribution to the experts

I'll go with the others at VF-30. Nice problem free coin.

I have it as JR-9, I think. R2. Is the 3 recut at bottom right?

For the record, I did it in less than 10 minutes, using only what I found on the Internet. I have no personal expertise in JR varieties. This is a hint, guys.

90% of my research happens in Heritage Auctions' archives. I pull up the history of the coin in question, and then resort by "Grade: Highest First" since it's the upper grades which are more likely to be offered with attribution in the auction copy. What I'm looking for is a description of the feature of the variety, as opposed to just a statement of the variety number. This is a valid method even for those coins which tend to always be attributed like Early Dollars and Bust Halves. I pay particular attention to auction results from 2007 and newer, which is when Heritage switched to really high-res imaging, to make comparison of features all the easier.

In conjunction with that, I do an independent Google search for relevant webpages. In this case, "bust dime varieties" returned two nice results at the top - a page dedicated to the series, and (even better) a vanity page from a collector showing off his collection. He had every 1835 variety pictured, and that's where I got my start. These types of pages are appearing at a high rate - it's a whole lot better today than it was in the mid-2000's when I first started doing this.

Your coin has a particularly neat arrangement of "10C" with the wildly off-line 1. I knew that was going to be a smoking-gun attribute, and I was right - on the collector's page, only two of the 9 known varieties for 1835 had anything resembling it. Off, then, to Heritage for high-res imagery of those two varieties. The higher-grade writeup for one of the JR-9's offered listed the recut 3, and the other variety had a completely dissimilar date.

Bazinga.

Now, there's something unmentioned here, of course. You have to have a feel for what features are usually different in a given set of varieties. Date is always an important factor - location, number spacing and alignment, recuts, etc. For those coins which have them, the arrangement of "10C," 25C," etc is prime real estate. For those coins with which you're not really familiar, just read the descriptions of a Heritage writeup to see what features they're calling out - that'll get you an idea of what you should be looking for.

That's Internet Attribution 101.

This is a tough one to market grade because it's quite attractive with significant high point wear. Technically a VF25 it likely graded higher and probably VF30 with VF35 not out of the question with the high eye appeal. VF30 would be my best guess and I really like it.

I'll guess VF-30.

I wouldn't be surprised if PCGS considered this coin to be a VF-25.