I am a firm believer in the old expression, "Buy the coin, not the grade." I recently picked up an 1876S Trade Dollar which is in a newer PCGS slab graded "Genuine" along with "DevEngvd". I was unable to find anything about the meaning of "DevEngvd". I assume that "Envgd" means "Engraved". But what is "Dev"? I could understand "Obv" or "Rev". But I have no idea what "Dev" means. I even emailed PCGS about it but I never received a response from them. I was unable to find any evidence of engraving on either side of the coin. But, apparently, someone at PCGS saw it. It's an "AU Details" coin and, again, I bought it because the price seemed reasonable and it looks darned pretty to me.
I'm reasonably certain it stands for Devices Engraved which is nothing more than a fancy way of saying tooled.
