Over Polished Die Questions

It's the lowest areas of relief that get polished (because they're the highest part of the die), so over-polishing will have roughly the same effect on different dies.

You see the same thing with other types of Die Deterioration because the design repeatedly fails in the same way. For example, on Mercury dimes, many dates show die cracks going from the wing-tip to the rim. Many memorial cents show die cracks going from the corners of the steps to the rim. Many FDR dimes from different years show the same die crack near the eyebrow.

The same events happen to the dies over and over. Clash/polish make a few thousand coins, clash/polish. Each time the die is polished a till bit mor of the fields are removed and some of the close devices start to suffer. So the same events happens from year to year, over and over until the dies are retired. Because the events (clashes) happen over and over, they affect the same areas, polish the same areas. So some dies suffer from over polishing and others suffer die wear and others both until they are no longer usable. That is just the way it is.

This is NOT die polishing.

It's damage caused to the die at some point in its life, but this is all mechanical - not done with a tool by a worker.

This would be considered technically a die gouge. Has nothing at all to do with die polishing.

I disagree. Yes there is a die gouge there but the surfaces have also been polished in an attempt to remove what they could of the gouge. You can see the gouges but they don't cause the flat area in the die that is down to the same level as the field. Also notice how much larger what blank flat area is around the eye on the second specimen. That is the result of excessive polishing. Nothing "gouged" it to make that broad flat smooth area.