Reengraving Question.

Another area to watch is on coins such as seated Liberty or Barber coins where the LIBERTY has been re-engraved. Not so much a problem on high end coins, but on lower end keys touching up the I or maybe a couple more letters to move a VG coin to a F or a F to VF can be profitable.

It's been said here more than once in the thread: Diamonds are the go-to point for grading IHC's. Full diamonds will cause a grader to consider strike instead of wear, and probably overgrade the coin to the tune of unwarranted value. Same with LIBERTY in Barber issues.

If you upload your original image into the optimizer, change the width back to the original value, then crop it down to just the coin, it would come out something like this. Probably yours would show more detail than my copy.



Edit: I see from the NGC price guide that if re-engraving could convince a grader to go MS63 instead of AU55 on this coin, it could be worth about $100 more. Too bad; the other details look pretty nice on this coin.