I don't disagree with @Mat - I'll echo his VF35- but XF40 would not surprise me at all. Perhaps had an old cleaning somewhere along the way, but I'd wager it is "market acceptable" now. Another amazing early Type coin!
VF-35 sharpness. You might run into the cleaning issue, but the graders tend to give more leeway to early coins.
40 and I don't see an argument supporting cleaning. I suppose it might get dinged a grade to 35 for the dings on the obverse.
I’m a Conservative grader. With the wear on the left side of Liberty’s Drapery and the wear on the rim on the verse, I’d have to go with a grade of 30. But it sure is a nice first year of issue Coin. You should be proud to own it.
I had this 1796 half dime bouced back at me in a body bag for cleaning. Yet, PCGS give this screwed up half dime a VF-30. And this half dime pulled an EF-45. You can't predict what the graders will do.
I agree. We live in an environment where it's probably a safe bet to say any/all earlier coins have been cleaned whether there's hard evidence of it or not. For the OP's coin, I don't see evidence of cleaning so that's why I said what I said. I'll be the first to admit that I'm no expert on detecting the more subtle signs of cleaning.
I think there were several reasons, but the most important one may have been that early U.S. coin designs emphasized national identity—portraits of Liberty, the eagle, and the inscriptions. Designers likely viewed the denomination as secondary because the coin's size, material, weight, and type already identified it.
