"Cleaned" coins--how much of a loss?

It's all a matter of degrees. If you sell a $100 coin for $300, or a $50 coin for $150, etc., then there are elements of misrepresentation. With the grading services you have a company standing behind the coins; and hopefully with raw coin sellers you have dealers standing behind what they sell. It is the only way to work accountability into the transactions. Sure people pay too much for stuff in some areas of collectibles. But right reason is the ultimate arbiter of fairness.

 

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Eh, I feel like he probably had it priced at what he thought it was worth, and you paid what you thought it was worth. You were both wrong. That is how the grading game goes. Sometimes you hit a home run, and sometimes you don't. Sometimes it takes a few submissions to get the results you wanted.

 

I would suggest that you buy coins that are already graded if you want graded coins.

Submitting coins is a gamble.

 

If you purchased the coin then you must have agreed with the pricing of the coin in order to buy it. This implies that you looked at the coin and decided if it was worth buying, and worth sending in to be slabbed. This one falls completely on you. Buyers need to be educated in what they're buying, and if you cannot tell if a coin looks cleaned then you probably shouldn't be buying anything that is not slabbed.

 

It is best (imo) to get the understanding first, I would look at the coin, listen to what the dealer said, then might have said something like this;

I agree with your grade and the coin looks good to me but my collection all resides in clean graded slabs so if I buy this and send it in and it comes back with a problem that neither of us is picking up on, will you refund the price, either in cash trade or if there is a restocking fee how much would that be?

One of the fine dealers I deal with had a 16d merc that he knew I needed for my collection, it was lower grade but there was something about it that did not seem right, so I told him of my concern and said that if I bought it and submitted it and it came back as not authentic, would he buy the coin back? He said no, so the coin never came home with me

 

Personally, if you buy a raw coin from a dealer, you are on the hook for them unless if they are counterfeit. It's not his fault that you weren't able to figure out they were cleaned or at a lower grade than he promised. That said, light cleaning/minor dipping usually lowers the value the same as the loss of one grade (AU55 to XF45 for example). Whizzing/harsh cleaning lowers the value by a grade of 2-3 depending on how bad it is.

 

The images make it clear that the coins were cleaned. Don't buy raw coins if you can't live with your mistakes. I don't blame a dealer for not taking a coin back that someone saw in hand and bought. I would have a problem with a dealer that would not take back a fake.

 

But dealers who sell problem coins as good coins time after time first need to be made aware of what they are doing, that it is bad business practice to sell $75 coins for $250 coins and that others are aware of this practice and their loose grading standards. In every field of business those who do shoddy work are identified and feedback is passed around. "What goes around comes around" and you reap what you sow.

 

I agree that a dealer should know what they are doing but many don't. They just pay one price and sell at a higher price. I actually believe that most dealers are honest but just like us collectors, they make mistakes.

 

I guess the answer to your question is how much did you pay for them and how much would you have paid for them had they not been "improperly cleaned"?

 

When a dealer puts "MS63" on his 2x2 he is making himself liable for the actual grade. I had a Seated dollar he called AU50 come back from NGC XF details improperly cleaned. Greysheet and all numismatic pricing is based on accurate grading. I understand there is some room for debate on any given coin and grading, but at a certain point you either have dealers who are not competent in their grading or are liars, and I prefer to rely on the first possibility as the second one has bad implications.

 

So if you try crossing a coin from one grading company to another, and it comes back lower, or cleaned, do you sue the first company?

 

Here is some case law: http://forums.collectors.com/messag...keyword1=Another Court Case involving Grading

 

"So if you try crossing a coin from one grading company to another, and it comes back lower, or cleaned, do you sue the first company?"

There is reasonable range of grading standards and then unreasonable. Like Numisgroup and similar companies that "certified" their coins of a particular grade and virtually every single time they were wrong.

 

What do you feel is your loss on this deal?

 

But I have had graded cleaned coins come back straight grade the next time, and visa versa. Is that a reasonable range?

 

"What do you feel is your loss on this deal?"

I have over $1300 into those two and one other coin and several grading fees; no choice here but to let them tone out and maybe 6 months in a WR style holder they may be market acceptable and grade.

 

Well, in MS63 these two add up to about $500 at retail. That had better be a pretty nice third coin to justify getting into them for $1300 including grading.

 

Of course I could play the same game and try to find a "greater fool" than myself, selling the coins raw as "high grade"; but I refuse to do that.