Nailed it. Not strong enough to be EF, but better than VF-20. The reverse looks good, but the obverse has a strange appearance. I'm wondering if it may actually be your photos - but they are making the coin appear to have been cleaned.
It's a little too blue; white balance is off so conclusions about surface originality are guesses. You have to assume the background for both faces is the same, and the difference between the two tells the story. It's a good reason to shoot against a white background if you don't have good white balance adjustability - when the background is the right color, you have the coin's color right also.
There used to be a fine IHC grading pdf available online from Rick Snow, but I'm not sure if it's still out there or not. Perhaps it is worth checking out. You mention "VF or better", but do notice how the hair flows into the ribbon. This is both how I was taught, and I believe was noted in the aforementioned pdf, as a quick and easy to distinguish between VF and EF although exceptions to the rule should he expected to some extent. This also may not follow, as a rule, what we see residing in plastic, but comes with the territory and setting one's own standards on the conservative side isn't such a bad thing.
There's also some rim damage. Nice coin with lots of detail preserved. Even if the color balance was corrected, just looking at the texture of the surface looks, to me, as though it has been cleaned. I'm thinking "VF+ details, improperly cleaned." I think you can be proud of this addition to your collection, however it's not valuable enough (IMHO) to consider submitting it to TPG. Jack
Thanks everyone I got this out of a bag of 20 IHC I paid a little too much for but with this I think it was worth the little extra I paid for mostly worn coins. Over all it equaled about $1.75 per coin and it had 2 1888's that I was crossing my fingers on It is replacing a worn 1907 in my folder now.
