i'm new to coin collecting and i wanted to know how to tell if a coin has been cleaned. like i said, i'm new so please dumb it down for me. thanks!
Cleaned coins Get a magnifier with a point light source. Look at the coin closely while tilting the coin at various angles. The cleaned coin always has impaired luster, sometimes in a small way sometimes significantly. Gold coins should be more obvious than silver and copper coins because of the luster on gold. There are a lot of them out there. When scam, boiler room coin operations get shut down, sometimes there are well over $30 millions in bad coins that have been sold. Where do you suppose those coins end up??? They often get recycled into new "collectors" or "investors".
who was running a 'scam boiler room operation'? what were they doing and who was being scammed and how? when were they shut down and by whom? shut down by the law? For what offenses? where did all this happen? how often and how many 'operations'? This happens once a year or more? why are you the only one who hears about this? Was it ever reported in the media? or are you referring to PCGS and NGC? they are still alive and well and scamming away:devil:
When a coin is struck, the metal flows outward toward the retaining collar at the rim. It is the metal flow along the surface which creates the luster. If you tilt a coin up and down and back and forth under the light, you can see the cartwheel effect of the luster radiating in a circular pattern around the coin. When a coin has been dipped one too many times, the surface of the metal flow is disturbed and the luster disappears. All you have is a shiny coin that has been improperly cleaned. There are other ways that a coin can be improperly cleaned. A coin that has been polished will show evidence of fine hairlines. Sometimes they can be seen by the naked eye, and sometimes you need magnification to see them. Sellers on eBay will sometimes take poor photos, angle the coin in the light a certain way or simply photoshop the pics to hide these hairlines. That's why it is not usually recommended to buy raw (uncertified) coins from sellers whom you don't know. Another method of improper cleaning is called "whizzing". This is accomplished using a high speed polishing wheel and most of the time you will see many hairlines that are parallel from the rotation of the wheel. This shouldn't be confused with die polishing at the Mint. Sometimes a die needs to be cleaned up after a clash or minor scratches. In such cases, the lines that will be visible on the surface of the coin will be raised as opposed to recessed on an improperly cleaned coin. All of these methods will affect the luster, some more than others, and it is best to view raw coins in hand to check for improper cleaning. Chris
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/pair-convicted-in-coin-swindle-1.2954791 Newsday (New York) June 14, 2011 Tuesday, Pg. A26 Pair guilty in coin swindle BY ROBERT E. KESSLER robert.kessler@newsday.com Two Long Island men were convicted yesterday of conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering in connection with a scam to cheat customers out of $30 million by using high-pressure tactics to sell coins at vastly inflated prices, federal officials said. edited - copyright Keep living in your dream world pal!!!
So, let me get this straight. You interrogate him over his answer, basically calling him a liar and demand proof of his statement. He provides that proof and your response is that it has nothing to do with the OP question? What a jerk…
To be fair, most of it has absolutely nothing to do with the OP's original question about how to detect a cleaned coin. Owle misquoted the amount of bad coins that (supposedly?) would end up back in the marketplace. The $30 million was the amount that customers lost, not the amount of bad coins. In a way, silvermonger was correct. Granted, his rant could have been a little more diplomatic, but his tongue-in-cheek barb about the grading services had absolutely nothing to do with the original question posed by mizozuman2. The net effect of all this, in case anyone hadn't noticed, is that the OP has not bothered to respond, and we have no way of knowing if he understood how it is possible to detect some of the ways coins can be improperly cleaned. Chris
To the OP, the best thing I can say is to go to the bank and get brand new coins. Take a look at them under the magnifier. See how the metal flows? See the luster on the coin as you tilt it in the light? A cleaned coin will not have this luster. A cleaned coin will have tiny scratches going against the grain of the coin. A cleaned coin will "look different". Its not terribly easier to verbalize, yet after you have looked at a lot of coins suddenly a lot of coins for sale do not "look right". It sounds silly, but actually really LOOKING at coins for a while really helps in collecting. While you are at this, get a bag of circulated cents or nickels and grade them, putting them into G, VG, F, etc piles. Use this versus a grading guide like photograde. Best way I know to teach a man how to grade coins. When you are done, look at each pile and see how many mistakes you made, and learn from them. I did this a few times as a kid, and since then can grade a circulated coin in about half a second. Chris
oh, i just looked at an ms-65 2000 half. and it had the pinwheel on it. so i get that. but i don't want to clean a coin D: so can someone post a pic of one if they have one?
Cleaning and damage from circulation are similar in many ways. Simply look at a circulated coin and see how the pinwheel effect is now gone, and then look closer and see WHY.
