How are coins properly dipped?

There are many things that come into play here. Yeah, to a degree it does depend on the coin. With certain coins the TPGs are much more lenient than they are with other coins when it comes to designating them as having been harshly/improperly cleaned, or not. While at the same time with other coins the TPGs are much tougher when it comes to assigning the harshly/improperly cleaned designation.

Then there is the inconsistency issue. You can send a coin in and it's labeled as harshly cleaned. You disagree and send it in again. This time it comes back in a regular slab. Or, you send in a coin that is still sealed in the original mint packaging, and it comes back to you as harshly cleaned. Obviously there is no way in the world it actually was harshly cleaned, but yet it was still designated as such. There are other scenarios as well, and all of them happen more often than some realize.

You also have to realize that there are a great many different ways to harshly or improperly clean a coin and all of them can and usually do result in the coin being designated as such. And each of these many different methods result in the coin looking different than those harshly cleaned with another method. Other times some that have been harshly cleaned by any method will slip through and be slabbed because of the inconsistency issue.

Then there is the issue of you. Meaning the coin may not look to have been harshly cleaned to you, but to someone with the requisite experience, to someone with trained eyes, it does. This also happens a lot, a whole lot. Being able to correctly and accurately identify a harshly cleaned coin in all of its forms is one the hardest things there is to learn in numismatics.

A coin having light scratches or hairlines is is only 1 of the many different indicators that a coin has been harshly cleaned. You can have a coin that has been harshly cleaned that doesn't have a scratch or a hairline on it, not a one. Another indicator is the coin being dark close to design elements and/or in the recesses and protected areas while being light in the fields and on the higher points. This indicator can be particularly difficult to correctly identify because circulated coins can have a similar look. But the key word is similar and similar does not mean the same, it means it kind of looks the same, but different. But a pair of experienced, trained eyes will recognize immediately that it has been harshly cleaned while others will not see it all.

On circulated coins another indicator can be what you don't see, like the coin having surfaces that are smoother than they should be for a coin with that given amount of wear. Or it can a surface that is too rough that is the indicator. On uncirculated coins breaks in the luster can be an indicator of harsh cleaning, but breaks in the luster can also be a sign of wear, and you have to be able to tell the difference between the two.

Another indicator is the color of the coin. A coin being the wrong color in the wrong places, given what the coin is, is a dead giveaway that the coin has been harshly cleaned.

In other cases there may only be a very small area of the coin that was harshly cleaned. It can be something as simple as someone wiping an area no bigger than the end of a pencil eraser with a cloth. This is commonly called a wipe and that is reason enough for the harshly cleaned designation. The improper removal of spots, even tiny spots, is reason for the harshly cleaned designation.

All of this is merely touching the surface of the subject of harshly/improperly cleaned coins. Like I said it is one of the hardest things there is to learn if for no other reason than because there is so much to learn about the subject.

As for my thoughts on your coin, yeah it looks to have been harshly/improperly cleaned to me.

 

Harsh cleaning, improper cleaning, even altered surfaces sometimes - they all fall under the same umbrella. Like I said, there are thousand different ways to do it and they all can look different from each other.