Is This Die Polish?

Nope - die polish will never reach into the devices. I'd call them extreme planchet striations combined with a weak strike, since they're so prominent in the star. It rather bothers me that they're visible on the rim, though; I should expect the upsetting process to wipe them away. If NGC decided it's OK, though, I'll go with it.

As a raw coin, I'd have trouble believing it wasn't some form of roadkill.

No, the transfer is PIDT - Progressive Indirect Detail Transfer. 52s are notorious for it... 18m coins minted and only 104 dies (or 180k per die) vs. the more common 10-25k of the period. Combine the thin planchet of the trime and at least one improperly annealed die and Bob's your Uncle.

In my collection I have the late state reverse paired with and without the obverse demonstrating PIDT. Usually fairly obvious around XF40.

The scratches are what gives me pause, however...

No the upsetting process should not affect planchet striations around the edge of the planchet. Upsetting applies force to the edge of the planchet directed toward the center of the disk. This causes the planchet to bulge and thicken along the circumference but would not apply pressure to the upper an lower surface of the planchet so the striations would remain.

Well, this is from the 1850s, so it's nothing recent, in fact it was part of the 1st years of the "new" Steam Powered equipment - I've found this I need to order and read: http://www.wizardcoinsupply.com/jou...35-1852.html

The trime itself is the 2nd tiniest coin the US Mint ever produced (14mm in diameter, 0.75g in weight). The US Gold 1 Dollar "Liberty Head" (Type 1) of 1849-1854 is the smallest (13mm) but weighed more (1.67g).

Secondly in 1852 especially they beat the heck out of the dies by using them so much (minting over 18 million coins using just over 100 dies).

You often hear about die polishing of Morgans because they're big enough to see clearly. Remember, the DIE is the inverted piece of metal pushed into the blank. So the surface of the die becomes the field of the coin. If the die get damaged it is polished (using cloths, abrasives, all the things we don't want to do a COIN), and if it's not completely smoothed out, the marks on the die (scratches INTO the die) transfer from the die to the field (as raised lines). See the picture here for a great example: http://www.vamworld.com/Die+Polishing

The problem here is that we're looking at a mint state coin and yet one that has dozens of straight lines that /a/ are INTO the coin surface (would be RAISED on the die) and that run from the RIM through the FIELD and into the design itself - the high AND low spots of both the die and the coin. So if the die pressed on the coin, some of them should have been flattened out by the strike (as is in these examples: http://www.vamworld.com/share/view/28530821). So they would have had to be extreme on the trime planchet.