Cleaned or Polished die?

Only the place where the lines are visible has been touched at all, and it was a heckuva coin in the first place. Still a heckuva coin; look at the discussion it prompted.

A certain percentage of the "luster" - perhaps a substantial part of it, but certainly not all - is from the mylar of the flip reflecting things. I've been thinking about this all night, and the current working theory is (assuming messydesk's observations are accurate, and chances are if messydesk disagrees with you, you're wrong ) that the damage was accidental and the owner (at the time) created the toning deliberately to hide it. I don't see much of any indication of the need for deliberate abrasion, and BigTee44's images seem good enough to show any evidence of something prior to the hairlines, if the evidence still exists.

As frustrating as this is to me, it may be as close as I ever get to "knowing."

 

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I read the whole thread here, and all I can really conclude is that I'm not buying the "harshly cleaned die" theory. If that were a possibility, why would there be no reference to it in hundreds of years of numismatic literature (or its proxy, Google)?

I'd like to see good pictures of the coin outside the 2x2 as well. I don't think these lines are created by the mylar, but some of the toning might be accentuated by it. I know I've seen hints of rainbows on coins that weren't there once I busted 'em out of the 2x2s and put 'em in Air-tites.

Based on what I've seen, I'm leaning toward whatever it is having been on the die to begin with, but I'd love to be persuaded otherwise by the aforementioned pics outside the 2x2.

 

We're just going to agree to disagree on this one. No hard feelings, of course, but I'm never going to believe your theory possible, much less true in this case. Even if I could come to your way of thinking regarding the edges of the devices - and I haven't exactly ignored the fact they're not particularly deep; it just means the gap would be very small but still noticeable - it still doesn't explain how the lines stop before the devices and then jump into them full-strength.

On the other hand, both of those features are classic signs of postmint cleaning/brushing/whatever which we've all seen a thousand times.

I challenge things, Doug. I dislike "conventional wisdom" and feel complacency has crept into numismatic research. It's why I take threads like this to the wall. Heck, I've told Mike Diamond flat-out in public that I considered him wrong (I still think he's wrong about the coin we were discussing ). But not this time. This stuff could only happen to those features when they're a positive, not a negative, for the exact same reason why we get grease-filled letters.

 

GD can only dance on the edge of the coin. he has 3 best answers only becoz he is my new court jester and i have to take care of him. the last 2 left the forum

 

I have always thought that the surface of a die next to the devices becomes harder than the rest of the surfaces. I call it work hardening. Maybe the wrong term when talking coins. That would make it harder to scratch.

One other thought. The grease and junk can mound up in the devices. I can see how the first wipe or two from a mint worker would ride over that mound and carry away most of the metal shavings. That could leave scratches on both sides of the device.

I don't have a solid opinion on this coin but feel there may be more than one answer to everything going on with it.

 

Not gonna get into another argument with Doug, but this is definitely post mint brushing/cleaning, followed by an AT attempt to cover it up.

As for the photos - based on the angle and lighting, it is absolutely possible to hide even very significant polishing:

 

if a 2nd coin with identical marks surfaced, would that support the die being harshly cleaned? just trying to learn something new.

 

Not exactly. Two coins with an identical pattern of lines tend to indicate the lines are in the die and not the coin, but if the lines are grooves in the coin, and not raised lines transferred from grooves in the die, the coin is still cleaned.

 

It would be statistically impossible to have *exactly* the same pattern of lines from cleaning on two coins. You could have similar cleaning hairlines, but not exactly the same. I agree that if they are grooves in the coin, then it is cleaning - but if all the lines match up on two different examples, I'm going to say 100% that it is a die polish effect.

You would need high quality pictures, or in hand examination, to confirm this, however.

 

Of course. I was speaking from a theoretical standpoint. Also, it was awkward to say that a second coin with lines identical to those on the cleaned coin above would support the notion that the cleaned coin was merely struck from polished dies.