What has been done to this Morgan!!

Saw this on e-bay and wondered...whaaaaaaaaaaat?

 

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Looks like it was polished and then stood on edge with a blue wall behind the photographer...

 

The ebay listing probably says ****PROOFLIKE A+++++ UNC****

 

You made me look back, and indeed, the listing says "cleaned or polished". Looks almost like it was chrome plated.

 

That, friends and neighbors, is a crime.

 

It looks like it was polished on a jewlers rouge wheel. Belt Buckle Material now.

 

Just a polished coin with weird lightning. Might have sat in a bit of mild acid or dip solution for a long while before being polished too.

 

Yeah, just polished. You can do this with baking soda and a toothbrush.

 

No thank you...

 

No. That would leave a very distinctive pattern in the surfaces that this coin does not possess. This coin is not whizzed - it is polished. There is a difference.

 

It's a cloth buffing wheel and they are used for polishing. You can achieve a near chrome plate finish with the right polishing compound.

 

You don't get marks when you move things at Dremel speed, either.

I'll bet this one has had so much metal removed that you could tell the difference on a scale.

 

Sweet! I'm gonna go make some proof Standing Liberty Quarters!!! wheeee!

 

Stipulated. This coin, however, demonstrates two strong arguments against that method:

1) Relatively large-dimension pitting on the surface, indicative of machine work so strong as to remove metal. The surface of a planchet is not perfectly homogeneous in terms of hardness - there are "stronger" and "weaker" spots in the alloy, and machine work will often result in the "cratered" look we see on this coin, on both fields and devices.

2) The "halo" of unpolished areas is very small, only found in the tightest of nooks and crannies on the coin. In order to achieve this by hand with a polishing cloth, one would have to painstakingly employ either fingernails or a sharp stick to put the cloth into spaces that tight. Machine polishing can achieve this simply by pressing harder, and 1) indicates they pressed very hard indeed.

So, although your point is perfectly valid and it's likely a large plurality of "polished" coins arrived there by that method, this case indicates machine involvement to me with a reasonable degree of certainty.

 

That's one screen ... ruined.

 

I've never "whizzed" a coin, but one of my cats has.

 

Figures that it would happen when I was trying to be completely serious...