These are very difficult to grade. Few draped bust dollars have full details. Wear points to examine are the hair (highest points), Liberty's drapery, stars, shield, eagle, stars above eagle and clouds. As you can see from these PCGS-graded examples, even armed with the above information is not enough. There are strike, die wear, and rim height issues that affect the sharpness of details. The grades for the below dollars look quite screwy. I know I suck at grading these. I would have BB'd OPS coin but we all know the TPG's give a pass on them because virtually all have been cleaned (though some worse than others). Lance. F15 VF20 VF25 VF30
Those all look like the same grade, with some different points with more wear than others, look at E plur. on the VF30, its not there where it partly is on the 15
Well, we know it's not counterfeit because it's in a PCGS holder. The question is, was it cleanly graded and if so, what did it earn? Lance.
If it were not for the scratches on the VF20 coin, it would have graded higher than any of these. As for the OP's coin, I'd call it a 30 but I'm guessing PCGS said 35.
PCGS said : This really surprises me tho. This coin has a really decent look to it and honestly I have seen much worse coins in no problem holders. I'm thinking of doing an experiment with this coin and naturally encouraging the coin to tone a little bit and seeing if it doesn't go into a no problem holder.
Looking at the coin in hand... it's really one of those that I have seen a hundred times in a regular no problem holder that you know has been lightly cleaned...
I would guess it would come back as 30 or 35 on a different day. Would have never guessed a genuine holder.
I think PCGS is all over the board with these Flowing Hair coins. They graded this coin a VF25, when clearly it's an F15 based on the details. Also I think this coin probably had a cleaning long ago, but then retoned.
Are you going to re-submit it? I never let a "genuine" dissuade me when I'm convinced a coin should get a clean grade. More often than not the coin ultimately grades just fine. WL, that 1806 is very pretty! Is it yours? PCGS does a lot of market-grading on these old beauties. Be happy! Lance.
I'm not complaining Lance, especially since I bought about a year ago for $350 (a steal). However, with most of the E PLURIBUS UNUM motto gone, I don't know how this got a VF25 grade. Whatever!