IMO for a coin to be FBL ALL of the lower horizontal bell lines must be complete, fully struck and uninterrupted. There is a plethora of "sorta" FBL coins out there sneaking their way into FBL holders, which diminishes the value of truly full-struck FBL coins. (This is the NGC standard; PCGS only looks at the bottom bell lines as noted above.)
There is a "grading grey area" with the bottom set of lines as a weak strike can make a coin appear to have interrupted bell lines. Some folks are okay with such coins getting FBL designations, but personally I'm not -- I want a FBL Franklin to be well-struck. The same applies to weakly-struck
Jefferson nickels and
Mercury dimes sneaking their way into FS and FB holders.
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