Die insufficiency versus cabinet friction versus slight wear

[marvf]

I just purchased the three graces crown in a London auction, slabbed NGC PF66. I noticed, when I got the coin, that on the graces side, the right graces leg has a light shiny area down her leg, right on the highest line of the design, as well as a spot of shine on the buttock of the left grace.

 

Since the coin is in a "66" slab, the graders obviously felt that there was no wear on the coin. Then to what do I attribute these lack of frost areas? They occur right where, I would guess, you would find wear if the coin had been in circulation, or if the coin had rested on this side a slid around in a case for years. Since the rest of the coin has frost, and the field areas are proof with hardly any marks (virtually no marks), and there is basically no shiny spots on the obverse, I can probably eliminate actual wear as the cause of the reverse shiny areas; however, then I have to decide whether they were caused by cabinet friction or die insufficiency, i.e., there wasn't enough metal to fill the die at these points, resulting in the metal not picking up the frosty surface of the die.

 

So my question really boils down to: can a coin with cabinet friction by graded PF66 by NGC? Or, in this case, was the determination made that this was die insufficiency, and not cabinet friction? The coin should be easy to find; there is only a population of one 1817 ESC 223 PF66 in the NGC census, and I would imagine that Ken Krah would remember the coin since it was recently slabbed for the St. James auction. This is apparently the nicest three graces most people have seen.

Thanks for listening.

[1jester]

Do you have photos for us?

[marvf]

Ken Krah already answered that in his opinion, the Three Graces exhibits die insufficiency, not wear (or cabinet friction). I will post some pictures when I can figure out the best way to take pictures of my coins with my new Canon A610 camera.