Cleaned or Polished die?

What do you think? Still appears to be luster on the sun as I rotate it in the light.

 

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I'm thinking cleaned, the lines appear to go over the devices as opposed to underneath of them. Looks like someone tried to remove the toning

 

Would the Mylar from the 2X2 be causing this? Did you use a flash to take the pics?

 

The mylar shouldn't cause this. This was cleaned.

 

The coin was cleaned? If that be the case then was it also artificially toned to cover the cleaning and not a die issue?
The toning is in the area of the anomaly!

 

you can't tell anything thru the plastic

 

I saw this same thing on Rick Tomaska's coin show (no, I don't buy his high priced coins) but he showed how a coin can show scratches from under a certain lighting condition and tilted at a certain angle - I can't remember what he called it but it was on Franklin Halves.

 

cleaned. if the lines were die-polish lines they would be raised, and they would run right up to the design elements instead of stopping short of them.

 

If the implication wasn't there that these are all images of the same coin at the same time, I would believe they were before and after images of a coin having been brushed hard to remove the toning. It's especially obvious in the third and fourth images, and the ninth and tenth. These lines are harsh enough to not "disappear" completely under varying lighting, and the third and fourth are lit sufficiently similarly so that should not be the case anyway.

If you tell me these are all the same coin at one moment in time, BigTee44, I'll believe you, but it'll force me to reevaluate just how bad a brushing is able to be hidden by lighting angle. The lines are deep enough in places to form strong reflections. Crazy.

 

It's certainly not a polished die. The huge tell is the haloing around the devices and the fact that the lines continue on the devices. Polishing of the die would show the lines going right up to the devices and appear as if they went under them not over them as in this case.

 

Since when could you scrub a die this hard and have the lines thus created fall short of the edge of a device? That doesn't pass the elementary smell test of a rookie numismatist. Die polishing is usually heaviest at the edge of the devices, and near-impossible to keep away from those edges.

It's daft to claim otherwise.

 

So, what's your explanation?

 

Regarding the difference between the "polished-looking" and "not" images, I have none at the moment; the degree of damage visible in the pics where it's lit exceed any of my previous experience regarding how much damage can be hidden via photography by an order of magnitude. The sun on the obverse is the best example; it's scored, fer cryin' out loud. In that regard, I await BigTee44 to specifically state that these images are all from the same coin (I don't doubt that) at the same time, because I believe they're before-and-afters. If he so states, I'll contemplate what might cause straight-up gouges to disappear with only lighting. Anyone who understands coin photography understands how deep those lines have to be to create the light/dark contrast between the lines and the adjacent, unmarred field.

Regarding die polishing, I'm first astonished that this requires explanation to anyone who's ever seen it before.

Second, I'll suggest you grab a sanding block and a sheet of 40-grit, and sand the edge of a stainless steel table. Make every_single_line stop short of the edge - at exactly the same spot - and oh, yeah, your technique has to pass over the edge so it'll hit a second table an inch away on the same stroke at exactly the same strength so you can see the lines you leave are continuous.

But use a table with square edges and not round ones, because that's how dies are built. They do not "gradually taper" into the recessed devices; it's an edge.

Having contemplated that, explain how you can polish a die (or, Doug, "wipe grease off a die" - what'd they do, stop the wiping cloth at the precise, equally-spaced point adjacent to the devices too?) without the lines at the precise edge of the devices not being at least equal in strength.

Good Golly, folks. Think.

 

OP, are you able to tell (with 10x or 16x) if these lines are raised or recessed on the coin?
I find it highly questionable that, these mystery lines only appear in the toned areas.

 

Very inconsistent, yet perfectly parallel, similarly deep, and all ending at the same precise distance from devices in multiple places. Yet, somehow there is also sufficiently-consistent pressure to create the same parallel equal lines within devices, all the way to the device edge inside the die where a rag cannot reach (ever tried to dry the inside corner of a wet can?) Really?

Wow.