Pcgs coinfacts lists an estimated survival of 1800 in all grades of a mintage of 24,500 is extremely rare in ms personally I think the seated dollars are very underrated and undervalued for their scarcity
thanks for the comments guys. I really like the overall look- even gray, bordering on a "circam"- smooth fields and so on. BUT, I wound up sending it back. When I received the coin in the mail, I looked at it under good light to make sure the surfaces were OK-- they were-- sent + fb to the seller and a couple of days later made some photos. As I was adjusting the size and image sharpness on the computer, I noticed something about the rims: patches of bright striations on areas of the rims on both sides. these were brought out at 12:00 due to the lights being to left and right of the coin. So I looked at the rims every which way with a 10x lens and concluded that someone had used a tool, probably a handheld one with a rotating wire brush, to carefully remove something from several areas on the rims. Definitely not filing as the amount of metal removed was tiny, but definitely not normal from circulation or storage. I think there was probably some black crust on the rims and someone decided to pretty things up. Now this was done subtly, and I doubt the seller noticed it. However, eventually I would like to send this in to be graded, and it would be painful to have it come back in a genuine holder as I had paid about full VF money for it. So, I returned it for a refund with a message to the seller about the issue. He promptly relisted it and it sold for what I think was an appropriate amount (If I had been able to get it for that, I would have kept it). Anyhow, the moral of the story is "check those rims" closely. The search continues. trying to find 1840s dollars in choice VF is much harder than finding them in XF or AU, let me tell you!
Thanks Rusty, I sort of hemmed and hawed about it for a few days, because otherwise the coin looked so darned nice but it had gotten under my skin by then. I do think the new owner got it for a fair price. I thought it would make a nice educational thread here.
My first thought when I looked at the coin was honestly "too good to be raw". I'll agree, I think the rims have had some gentle doctoring. It's darn close though. To a dansco collector it's probably the perfect fill. To someone looking to certify, its a major dice roll. Maybe net grades low VF?
Yes, it was a tough call for me. And I think low VF is right. It will probably be a long time before another one calls out to me. But, that's the fun of the hunt, eh?
Problem free Seated dollars in affordable grades are pretty elusive. They have got to be up there on the list of "coins most likely to have been cleaned". I would venture to guess most of the non cleaned examples out there are in holders.