Please Explain Die Polishing To Me

SilverEagles92

This is from another thread, and it got me curious. I have a raw peace dollar that looks much like it was wizzed or cleaned, then I saw the SEGS post. The morgan mentioned in that thread looks remarkably like my peace dollar. Can someone explain die polishing to me?

jabba

This might help
INFO

GoldenEyeNumismatics

Simply put...

as dies strike more and more coins, the metal that is moved when a coin is struck slowing erodes the design on the die. Once a die gets to a certain degree of erosion, it is polished (literally polished) to removed the deteriorating surface and expose a fresh surface

sinin1

you can usually tell whether die polish or cleaned by the letters -> die polish goes under the letters while cleaning goes over

also die polish are raised lines while cleaning are lines that cut into the surface

robertpr

You've heard about harshly cleaning coins and how it hairlines the surfaces, etc. Well, when the dies were cleaned it did the same, hairlined them. Then more coins were struck and the hairlines in the die translated into die polish lines on the coin - slightly raised "hairlines".