Purchased not too long ago from a veteran TD collector who is changing his collecting focus. What do you think is the assigned grade? Anything else about it that is interesting? I'll post the grade Tuesday evening.
Yeah I am in the 61-2 realm Has some minor head wear if pictures are accurate Has field hash both sides. No real wear on high points on the reverse. Hopefully they did not call that field hash cleaning Nice though I like it
With these photographs telling us nothing about luster, we have to rely exclusively on wear plus what little we can deduce about luster breaks on device high points. I don't know if the 1875-S is notorious for weak strike, but Liberty's hair looks very weakly struck to me. I also believe I see slight wear points on the breast and on the tip of the eagles left wing. For comparison, here's pics of my 1877-S PCGS graded AU-55. So, I am calling the OP's coin an AU-58 while giving it the benefit of the doubt for strike and luster. It might grade lower if examined in hand but I don't think there is a circumstance that would call for any mint state grade. As always, I am happy to be wrong if I can learn something from the experience.
I'm not knowledgeable on this series, but according to my Whitman's Guide Book of Liberty Seated Silver Coins, this would the Type II reverse with the Micro S mintmark, making it scarce/rare. The book also says strike quality varies. Doesn't change my view of the grade, however. Neat coin.
Now for the grade reveal... The AU's have it! As was promptly pointed out by B.berrypie, this is the scarce type 1/2 micro s variety (not cherrypicked by me); the story I have heard is that someone at the Phila. mint grabbed an S MM punch made for dimes and used it on the die(s) to be sent to SF. It's a fun variety; I have another (raw about AU50) with terrific patina but some rim digs. There is some highpoint rub that you can see, and some slight loss of luster in the left obv field (also hard to see); the luster breaks are actually more apparent in hand on the rev. I don't see any signs of a cleaning under the unforgiving light of the xenon bulb in my kitchen range hood. Thanks for the guesses and comments, and especially to Publius2 for such an informative post as to their thought process in evaluating the coin.