The fine hair lines are indicative of a fine abrasive have been used...baking soda and water was very common in the day. Still a pretty coin...my favorite series! smat
Thank you for the video, BH1964! That was very helpful! I certainly have more to learn about how to spot cleaning. I usually just look for fine parallel lines indicating brush strokes, but you wouldn't see those if someone buffed it!
There is something of a pendulum that swings back and forth with third party grading. Right now, all of the TPGs are grading coins more strictly than just a couple years ago. Some coin series, like the Morgan dollars and Peace dollars, are graded more tightly than others, possibly simply because the TPGs see so many of them. Even within those series, some dates are graded much more tightly than others.
Many of us have frustrations with some (or all) of the TPGs because of these subtle shifts in how they see particular coins or where they draw the line between graded coins and detailed coins. Their "dipping isn't cleaning" and "old but market acceptable cleaning isn't a cleaned coin" exceptions are examples of standards that changed over the years. Their tighter views of everything else that points to cleaning makes guessing how a TPG will see a particular coin even more difficult. It's made a lot of collectors more reluctant to pay the cost for their grading opinions. The real value of the TPGs is their guarantee of authenticity for the more valuable coins in a series or the more frequently counterfeited coins.
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