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Message:: [QUOTE="SuperDave, post: 2503647, member: 1892"]Excellent images for the question you ask of us. My best response to them is, "pretty much nothing looks right." Too much "graininess," "porosity," whatever term you wish to apply, for me to feel this was struck under the 100+ tons of pressure it took to create one at the Mint. Keep in mind, under the sort of pressure which makes metal flow like liquid, from an engineering standpoint it's greatly advisable to make that metal movement as smooth as possible. Therefore, flat surfaces (the fields) of a coin die were polished to make them as smooth as possible, features raised on the final coin (devices) tended to follow smooth transitions with little "sharp" definition, and surfaces which could be described as "rough" were avoided in the majority of cases. Even on coin designs like Seated issues, where there is rock represented, a close look at high-resolution images of Mint State examples will - to the discerning eye - show the engineering effort put forth to enable fast, successful strikes of thousands of examples while minimizing die wear. Very, very few coins (the Buffalo Nickel being an exception, and they're quite difficult not only to grade but to evaluate in terms of strike quality or die wear because the fields are so rough) were not greatly compromised from a design standpoint towards ease of production. That's Coin Design 101 - make it economically strikable, then find a pleasing design which allows that end. I would be deceptive by failing to mention it's known that both circulation wear and die wear from long use can lessen these effects. All the same, the fields in particular will rarely lose much of their smoothness over the course of a die's life, and it's intuitive that much handling by many fingers will_not_result in anything but a "smoother" coin. Circulation wear will smooth, not roughen, the "positive" (raised above field level" devices of a coin, and die wear (again, intuitively, considering how many times metal has flown through them under tremendous pressure) tends to smooth and lessen detail rather than roughen it. An issue-specific point for your Seated Dollar is found in the comparison of apparent wear on the hair and cap/pole. The former are - to the successful student of the issue - worn down to (at best) low EF appearance, while the latter show barely any evidence of "circulation" at all. And the first thing that circulation would have done is worn the "roughness" off of the talons. Now, one argument against all this is the potential for the coin to have been buried in soil of unknown acidity, then dug up and cleaned. Such an experience can definitely result in the roughened look of the devices on this coin. But it would have done equal damage to the fields, as well, and although not as smooth as I'd expect from a struck coin the fields of this one most definitely don't show the effect of being ground-engaged. My previous remarks regarding the lower (on the z-axis from the coin's surface) details within the eagle's feathers stand reinforced by your images. I expect more detail there. The differences are subtle; just remember that "blank space" in a device - where the level of the device reached the same plane as the fields - is the enemy of pleasing design (because they'd start getting larger the moment the die started to wear, not to mention from a die engineering standpoint field-level spots in devices are an interruption to smooth metal flow), so one would expect even the "blankest" of spaces to show some little z-axis curvature. T'ain't real.[/QUOTE]

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