That would not straight grade. It's been polished to death. Overlooking that, I'd say the technical grade is around Very Fine.
What grade? Details. This is an abused coin--as others have said. It is dipped, polished, and buffed to death. VF to Ef details at most.
How would a normal collector know this? Is there a way to spot this, I am new to collecting. Do I need to get a microscope to see that it was cleaned or dipped, what is the signs of this treatment. Thanks for any reply.
Here hair has been totally smoothed out, showing wear or buffing. The same on the eagle's breast and wings. Then you look at how clean the coin looks and if it had that much use, it would not be so shiny. Then you see how worn the hair and things are compared to some of the other areas and it looks like they've been smoothed down (uneven wear basically)
Harshly cleaned VF. You learn this by looking at a lot of coins to get a feel for what a coin in any grade should look like without problems. Then you look at coins the are obviously cleaned and get a feel for what those look like -- unnatural sheen, buffing lines, pallor instead of luster.
The biggest give away is that this coin is missing details all over. The eagle's breast and wings should have more detail in the feathers. Liberty's hair should have more detail. These detail are worn slick from ciculation. Circulated coins, missing this much detail aren't this clean, they will be gun metal gray with dirt in all the cracks and crevases, which means someone clear and polished this coin. Hope this helps.
Thanks everyone so much. I guess my first few coins I bought were clearly polished because they sound exactly as how you described. I'll keep note for that. I appreciate all the feedback.
Definitely look at as many coins as you can in the grades you are interested . Any time a coin is completely uniform in color is a red flag , highly polished and shiny coins without any cartwheel effect are also suspect tho the cartwheel effect ie usually gone when you get to EF and below grades .
