With this being a heavily counterfeited coin and not in a slab, I'd be more worried that it's authentic versus being graded properly. At least at this point.
To me it looks like a solid AU. It was at the Westchester show yesterday, many of the dealers are up in Manchester, NH this weekend for that show. My experience with the 55 DDO is somewhat limited but I "bit" at one last winter that walked in a show from a jewelry store owner, he was firm @ $2000, it ended up grading MS62 RB CAC, a good thing too because an AU58 RB or a 60-62 BN are worth under $2000. In this case the thing to do would be walk it over to Joe @ Gardner Coin also at the show and get his opinion. The spreads on these are so tight due to how many of them were saved, and you're right that there are many fakes but in this case the dealer would not have shelled out over $1000 unless he got back up from others who could substantiate it.
I'll grant you they are pretty liberal when it comes to grading these and for the most part they are all grossly over-graded. But I just looked through about 50 of them and could not find any that had anywhere near the amount of wear on them that this coin has and was graded AU50. You asked.
Thanks for your professional opinions. The owner said that due to the reverse issue, a stain or something, he had net graded to XF45. Still it has a lot of red for an XF.
Fuzzy for sure. I'll give the dealer a little credit and guess he is close on the grade. I'll also guess he is about $300 too high on the price.
There are lots of less than perfect photos on this site, some cameras have macro features, you have to pay a lot more for super macros, there is always the cop-out that one would have to see the coin in hand....I hope members on this site get out this weekend for some healthy walks, the internet has a way of making people overly critical.
My goodness, it takes good images to get folks to get close to agreeing on a grade. That's just the way it is.
