Are these scratches, cleaning or die polish lines?

Hi,

I saw some lines at the hair of the obverse of this 1921 Peace dollar. They are all parallel. Are these lines scratches, cleaning or die polish lines?




Similar, I see some parallel lines on this 1876 S Trade dollar. These lines are not as obvious as my 1921 Peace dollar above. What are these lines? Cleaning or die polish related?






If I send these 2 coins to grading companies like NGC, will they come back as damaged? I know my trade dollar has chop marks, so I already expect a detail grade if I send this coin. I just wonder if the trade dollar is cleaned or not. How about the 1921 Peace Dollar?

 

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Peace dollar: scratches. Looks like it was in a holder (or on a surface) and was scraped across something. The lines are on the high points, in her hair.

Trade Dollar: cleaned. The fields are chock full of parallel lines, classic cleaning marks from a wire brush or something like that. The chopmarks kill the coin, the cleaning murders it.

 

I agree with Physics on both of them. Not sure what you paid for the peace, It is a good look at why they call these High relief, and the reason they redesigned the peace dollar after 21

 

Scratches! I have a proof Seated Liberty Quarter that has hairlines in the fields. If the hairlines were also evident in the devices then I would have come to the conclusion that they were post mint damage from someone wiping a cloth over the coin. They weren't so I concluded that they were most likely die polish lines. I sent the coin to PCGS and they agreed and gave it a straight grade. Here's an image that I took with my smartphone. I wish the picture was better but it does show the hairlines. Note the lack of hairlines on the devices. On a die, the fields are raised so that's where you'd expect the hairlines to show up from a worker wiping a cloth over the die.

 

I paid $170 in 2018 for the Peace Dollar and $220 for the Trade Dollar in 2020.

The Peace Dollar was listed as BU on ebay.

The seller of the trade dollar told me it is not a cleaned coin.

I know I cannot trust seller's description anymore

 

Thank you for the quick response!

 

Very nice coin!

 

The seller of the Peace dollar sent me this weird message after I received the item.

This was the exact message. I archived it since the message is a bit suspicious.

"Hello,
My girlfriend shipp these out and is no good with Coins please send back and we’ll get you the right one! With extra"

I ignored the seller.

 

The lines on the Peace Dollar are Post mint damage. They may have come from sliding it in or out of a holder. It’s too bad; they could have been prevented.

The Trade Dollar was lightly cleaned. Those parallel lines are indicative of cleaning. They are not that bad, but they will probably preclude the coin from finding its way into a third party grading holder with a straight grade.

The good thing is the Trade Dollar appears to be genuine. That is a big deal. Many of them are bad. I would be very careful about buying uncertified Trade Dollars.

 

under magnification, die polish lines should be detectable as raised, while damage scratches would be incused. hard to tell from the eye or low magnification, but it will be apparent under higher magnification which ones you are looking at with a bit of time looking at them to make the determination.

the peace dollar is scratches, die polish lines when found, are generally on the fields/the high points of the die, not in the recesses (on the devices).

the trade dollar, yeah, those are harsh cleaning scratches present in the fields and devices, I think a fine wire brush is probably a correct assessment.

 

I agree with @physics-fan3.14. Were these the exact coins shown on the original seller's site? If not, maybe this is why the seller was trying to make it right. I would check further. If they are the correct coins, you were right to ignore the seller. Use your best available resource(s) to insure your best decision in the future. Good luck.

 

Well, I'm late to the meeting, but I agree that the Peace is damaged (really sad!) and the Trade dollar is cleaned (long wispy marks in the fields).

 

I totally agree with @physics-fan3.14, what a shame.