The obverse of this dime is covered with small raised parallel lines across it. The reverse does not have it. What would cause this? It doesn't look like typical die abrasion or PMD.
Well, they either have to be postmint marks, have to have been put there by the die, or they were already there and the die failed to remove them when it struck the coin. I lean towards them being postmint. We can rule out planchet striations, because they appear on all levels of the coin here, including the places one would most expect a strike to wipe them out via pressure. We can rule out the die itself for similar reasons - they wouldn't let a hub that looked like that create dies, and any sort of contact on the die with a wire brush would by definition not reach the lowest parts of the die without being significantly stronger on the higher points of the die, which isn't visible here. So, in the fashion of Sherlock Holmes, we go with the thing left after all else has been eliminated: postmint damage. Your (excellent!) detail image of the nose kind of tells the story, as it clearly illustrates the gouges created by something like a wire brush passing over the surface of the struck coin. It also clearly shows the natural metal flow lines of the strike going in a different direction.
