This dime looks funny. It has a big cud on the back, but the surface looks almost...burnished. What is it?
Well, it is either a fake or it may have been a polished coin that someone treated with a mild acid to remove the high polish effect, then let the coin re-tone in some manner. Frank
Appears to have had some abrasive cleaning done to it. The evidence for my opinion: - The (almost) vertical lines running across Liberty's face, and to a lesser extent, in the fields around Liberty. - The dark borders around all the devices. Indicates areas where the abrasive cleaning didn't/couldn't reach. - And I don't know WHAT to say about the line going from 5 to 7 on the obverse around the date.
That same type of line is also in other places... looks like someone took a dremel to the fields, leaving a distinct line of seperation with the raised areas.
I believe what we are seeing around the date is patina, and in places we don't see it, it has been ground off, rubbed, off, whizzed off. Those areas seem to be retoning, as mentioned. Colors are not right, and immediately shout "CHEMICAL CLEANING." The devices now exhibit what is sometimes referred to as 'funky wear,' which is wear from friction other than normal flat wear, i.e., from cleaning. In addition, I believe the cud area has been tooled somewhat. See the deeper impressions and irregular groove ground into the cud between field and rim. And the top of the cud seems too flat now. I suspect it was buried and its ultra-thick patina partially resulting from environmental damage. I'm rather confident that the coin was buried for a long time. These are my impressions and I could be wrong about some of this. Few coins receive this much illicit attention, imho.
'Burnished' is a good word, but a bad practice That's a good word. 'burnished,' and may be accurate. Use of a pencil eraser, for example, can have results like this, but also can sometimes come out looking like blatant whizzing. But a lot of us just won't bid on or buy coins that have any one of a hundred signs of cleaning. We don't have to be right to avoid altered, damaged or cleaned examples, and it costs us nothing to avoid them. : ) Folks have told us not to clean our coins. Cleaning violates the responsibilities of stewardship shared by all collectors, to preserve a coin in its original condition to the extent possible. I guess it's what makes better or worse collectors, and a better or worse hobby, which is affected by each individual according to their behavior.
I believe it's been whizzed, it appears to have been covered with a heavy black crust that probably qualifies as corrosion. Where it has been removed, the clear areas have sharp, almost geometric borders. Whizzing will leave a sort of misty, frosted look which this coin seems to have on the 'white' areas. I believe I can see some whizzing marks crossing the drapery (parallel lines). If the entire coin was encrusted, perhaps the whizzer did it a favor by at least bringing some detail to light, but we'll never know.
