GTG: #1 1903 Morgan Dollar

You cant tell. If you see enough, you'll know it the second you see it. I see a lot of it on Carson City Morgans.

 

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Dang. Just gonna have to buy more so's I can learn.

 

I'm thinking with the stars, it's like that metal never moves at all and the fields around them are metal which has flowed away during the strike. You gotta figure the original planchet thickness is somewhere between the thickness of the struck coin field-field and that of the thickest devices. So yeah, I'm thinking it a strike artifact.

However, if we visualize a finish like that on the stars as similar to "mint frost," it could just as easily be a die state thing.

Conclusion: We're both right. That "frostyness" on the stars is an "early die state only" strike artifact.

Experience of seeing fifteen hozillion Morgans. In this case, the color/frostyness/whatever of that area indicates original Mint finish, and that's about the very first place you'd expect circulation to wear off the original finish.