Got the grade back on this 3 cent silver from pcgs and wanted to know if anyone could tell me what they mean by smoothed? It just seemed like a normal AU to me. I honestly don't know what they are talking about. I was not the happiest when I got the grade back but am willing to learn from my mistake.
I see what might be suspicious evidence in the upper right quadrant of the obverse, both in the field under OF and the star pointing towards the A.
I believe what they mean by " smoothed" is that someone tooled the coin to remove a dent or mark so that it could be sold at a higher premium.
@SuperDave is correct: however, IMO they used a nice weasel word to "detail" a harshly cleaned, damaged coin. A sharper magnified photo may indicate the area Dave has mentioned as that is definitely tooled!
With better images, I feel we will see more areas that were worked on. I'm seeing several places in the fields that worry me.
All of the fields, obverse and reverse, look unnatural in your pictures. Sometimes, a "smoothed" coin had some sort of environmental damage or corrosion. A coin doctor came and attempted to restore those surfaces to a normal-ish look. He did this by tooling them, basically pushing the metal back to a "smooth" appearance. Your pictures are not in-focus enough for us to determine exactly what/where your coin was smoothed - but if PCGS say it was altered, the odds are strong that your coin was altered.
This is correct. There is no luster remaining for such a detailed coin. Shine, but no luster. The surfaces were worked over.
Agree regarding the rectangular block under the OF A - it has parallel scratches (from upper left to lower right).
Just a minor technicality from advanced coin grading seminars: While you are correct, there is no mint luster on the coin; there is "shine" (reflected light from its surface) which is a form/type of luster. Shine = Luster.
