I am sure this topic has received many, many questions, however; my issue is how an appraiser can tell if a coin has been cleaned? My Grandfather passed away many years ago and my Grand mother left me some silver dollars. I sent a number of them to one of the top three appraisal services and they were returned with a grade. One of the coins was an 1883 S Morgan and they indicated it had been cleaned. My GF was extremely meticulous about his coins and I am sure he would never clean a coin. He always wore gloves when handling them.
It's sort of a misnomer that one is looking for signs of cleaning. Sometimes, you can see obvious signs of cleaning, sure, as when someone has taken steel wool to a coin, however, often times the signs of cleaning are much more subtle. There are many ways one might physically or chemically clean a coin. You're really looking for an absence of an original look. That skill takes a lot of experience to develop. To take it further, you're really looking for the absence of a market acceptable original look, since it is quite possible to clean a coin chemically while preserving a market acceptable original look. So what you are calling cleaning is really harsh (market unacceptable) cleaning. That can include a cleaning going back to the year of issue for the coin. Once cleaned, a coin almost never naturally regains a market acceptable look.
Yeah so that's been harshly cleaned. Telltale signs are the parallel hairlines across the coin, the halos of dark toning around the devices, and the lack of original luster commensurate with the level of detail on the coin. There is no original look there.
So, you see the pics and I know that nothing beats having the coin in your hands, but do you see any evidence of cleaning?
Yes it's harshly cleaned. I know sometimes a camera exaggerates scratches, but tilt and rotate this morgan under a light, you will easily see the cleaning hairlines.
as the others have said, all those tiny scratches (hairlines) running in the same general direction are clear evidence of a cleaning.
Cleaning marks are very fine, those are scrub marks and they are not linear. They follow the same arc across the surface like it was done with a circular machine. These are cleaning marks...
Ya see those parallel lines running southwest to northeast? Those signs of an abrasive cleaning......
As others have said, it has been harshly cleaned, and you can tell by all of the hairlines on both sides of the coin. ~ Chris
it does not mean you're GF cleaned it, it might have been given to him or he got it just to plug a hole in his collection until he found better, how did the rest of the coins come back?
Not only that, but a lot of folks back in those days didn't pay much attention to such stringent rules that we do today. They let a lot of things 'slide' which ain't all that bad. To me, it's like pulling a piece out of a dealers 'Junk Bin'. I like what I've found, but that's based on what I like, and not what it's worth.......
