Harshly cleaned. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150207910483 This guy even states "This could be the biggest discovery in Seated Halves in years!!!"
I vote polished because of the way it looks where the field meets the design. What ever was used to polish it couldn't get in those tight areas.
In my opinion, the seller is a scam artist, and the coin in question nothing more than an AU/MS coin that has been polished.
Because Arizona Jack on this board has demonstrated how this seller purchases problem coins, alters them more, then re-sells without mentioning what he did to the coins. There are several threads about this seller.
After looking at the photos, why do the close-ups look like a normal coin, and the full shots look as clean as new? They almost look like before-and-after (cleaning) photos.
I think you might be able to argue that using an eBay ID that refers to another user constitutes harassment of the reffered to user. Can also argue that he's try to pass himself off as that user, which is also against eBay rules.
That will be a hard case to make because Jack does not go by 'Arizona Jack' on eBay (at least to my knowledge).
Look at his other stuff. It's all quality as well. Here's an example. http://cgi.ebay.com/1899-S-Barber-H...ryZ11971QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Yeah, he's quitting alright.
OK, The quarter definitely looks cleaned. Even I as an amateur can see the way the cleaning was ineffective in the deeper areas of the coin.. For the half, I think SCNuss has it. The closeup definitely don't show anything remotely prooflike. They show a normal field for a coin. But this guy had definitely been playing tricks with the photos. The far shots are using superbright light to hide something. None of the photos show a natural looking coin.
