I really took this coin to the cleaners

This is what I plan to do. Some coins I've noticed tone naturally without any intervention in my envelopes, so I will probably leave it in one and check on it regularly over the next few months. If it doesn't respond I have some old envelopes from the 60s or so that seem to jump start the process.

 

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If you really want to take the shine off it, boil an egg, crush it, put it in a plastic bag. Put the coin in with it, check after 10 minutes or so, turn the coin over so it does both sides. Keep an eye on it and take it out before it darkens too much.

 

I understand the "practice". I'm making a point by my comment. You see, this is what's wrong with our hobby. There are no consistent rules. In the mid 20th century kits were actually sold in coin shops and at coin shows for collectors to "CLEAN and BRIGHTEN your US coins so they would have better eye appeal and increase their value". Then it became taboo to clean, dip, alter one's modern coins in any fashion. But it's OK, and alright to shine up and clean your ancient coins ... at least it is today. What happens in 20 years when it become taboo to clean, dip or alter ancient coins? If we have a rule that it is "wrong" to clean a coin 200 years old, but it's OK to clean a coin 2,000 years old, where is the consistency in our hobby? Either it is OK to clean ALL coins or it is not OK to clean any coin. Why make different rules for different eras since ALL silver and copper coins tarnish, corrode and gather crap along the way depending on how and where there are stored? IMO the hobby needs to be consistent.

 

I sometimes think the "crud" on an ancient can be attractive. But of course it depends coin to coin.

 

Many modern collectors also prefer slabbed coins to raw. Ancients collectors, by and large, have gone in completely the opposite direction. They are two wholly different areas of collecting and as such have different rules with respect to cleaning, grading, even collecting practices.

 

Because ancients have been buried in dirt or whatever for thousands of years so they have to be cleaned regardless, otherwise we'd be lift with globs of metal & or dirt to collect. Same can be said for some Medieval coins.

Issue is...what century is it ok to NOT clean a coin? When machines took over and hand hammering coins stopped? When U.S.A started minting coins?

 

Congratulations. Your story confirms the fascinating adventure of ancient coin collectors looking for the unaffordable jewel !. You did the right thing in having the coin treated by a professional, it could have been ruined otherwise. It looks now like a very decent, attractive coin.

 

Show me an Acient coin that has not required cleaning? If we don't clean, then there will be no hobby IMHO.

 

Yes we would. There are coins discovered regularly of more modern varieties which are OK to "conserve" (AKA clean) ... the Saddle Ridge Hoard, the SS Central America, the SS Republic ... numerous accounts of buried hoards of coins never recovered are scattered around the US, all of which will need to be cleaned (AKA conserved) when eventually found and yet may be acceptable to the hobby as collectible coins. Besides one can collect any coin, even holed coins, coin jewelry, love tokens, scratched and corroded coins)

 

Where we differ is you see it as one hobby but I have no interest in the hobby that considers coins untouchable and ruined if they have be outside their mint bags (AKA circulated). I collected US coins back in the 1950's when it was OK for a kid to be thrilled when he found a seated dime in circulation (I found two) and acid treat dateless buffaloes figuring they were better revealed than just considered trash. I do not see it as one hobby. I am interested in the coins; the other hobby is into the numbers on their slabs. The old 'wisdom' is, "All ancient coins have been cleaned; the ones with an inch of dirt on them used to have two inches." Once there was BU and UNC on top of the heap. I have to wonder what fad will rule in 2076. Look me up and let me know.

I just watched a TV documentary on Indonesian sulfur miners who descend into a volcano and carry out blocks of recently liquid sulfur. I wonder if the change in their pockets qualifies as naturally toned.

 

@Ed23 what TIF said.

And Doug.

@dougsmit it depends on if the Indonesian meant to do it!

 

I feel like ancient coin collecting has been pretty consistent. I the ancients I collect were cleaned, the ones collected by John Q. Adams were cleaned, as Im sure were the ancients collected by Pope Paul II (1417 – 1571) or Giovanni Mansionario ( died 1337). I'm sure Augustus even had coins that were cleaned, though I guess you cant call them ancient.

 

If Augustus had a 500 BC tetradrachm, it would only have been what we now call 'Early Modern'. I would love to know just how common collecting older coins was among the Romans. Wouldn't we love to have the 1st century edition of the Sear catalog?

 

I'm sure you and TIF have every right to collect whatever you want to collect, including harshly cleaned ancient coins. I do not have to, nor do I have to agree with your assessment on what is acceptable to do with a coin from that era or any other era. Some people only like slabbed coins, I HATE slabbed coins and wouldn't have one in my collection longer than it would take to break it out of the slab. To each his own, so you collect what you want and I'll collect what I want.

 

I appreciate your comments. Being of about the same age we both know how collecting has changed in our lifetime. I agree with you when you wonder what fad will be the rule in 2076. Maybe some of these younger collectors will understand our comments better in 2076 when they see for themselves how the hobby changes during their lifetime.

 

We are not promoting 'harshly' cleaned coins just the realization that the modern possibility of finding a coin that spent its entire life in someone's sock drawer just does not exist. The best cleaned coins are the ones that look like they did but no one has shown me a coin that was not cleaned to the point that would get it 'details' by modern standards. Many are cleaned so well that I can accept them as attractive.

 

I find this discussion interesting and don't want it to become defensive and adversarial, but there are some common truths about collecting ancient coins that aren't relevant for more modern coins.

It's simply a fact that 95%+ and maybe even 99%+ of all ancient coins have been cleaned to some extent. This is inescapable. Most ancient coins are discovered in a state that generally resembles this:



Putting aside the observation that these coins are unidentifiable in this state, the natural question an ancient coin collector will ask is "How am I going to fit these into my 2 x 2 flips or my Abafil case?"

OK, I'm joking, but the point is that other than a very few coins and hoards that have been buried in river silt or other places where air and soil won't degrade them, all ancient coins have to be cleaned in order to even identify them.

Possibly one of the underlying issues here is that you consider the OP coin "harshly" cleaned, as your quote above seems to imply. It is certainly true that ancient coins can be over-cleaned and harshly cleaned, which would be detrimental to their appeal to most collectors. But without exception, other than harshly or destructively cleaned coins, the fact that an ancient coin was cleaned is of no relevance to a true collector of ancient coins. This isn't a question of personal preference or opinion, it's simply the reality of ancient coins and ancient coin collectors.

Visible cleaning marks (e.g., scratches that aren't ancient), parts of the coin's surface being removed during cleaning, tooling, etc., all affect the appeal of the coin to a collector whose evaluation of a coin may be affected by how harshly the coin may have been cleaned, but no collector of ancients pays any attention to the fact that the coin was cleaned per se.

To a great extent, I think this is what differentiates collectors of ancients from collectors of modern coins. The portrait of Lincoln on a 1909S VDB cent is exactly the same as his portrait on a 1960 cent. The only differentiation is rarity and condition. Soil deposits, bronze disease, etc., rarely if ever attach to a modern coin, so it's understandable that a cleaned modern coin will be perceived as being less valuable than a pristine, untouched one.

There are no pristine, untouched ancient coins fresh from the mint. For ancient coins, the history, artistry, and many other factors determine the collector's interest in the coin.

 

Many of us differ on which factor comes first. Grade is probably in the ten most important factors defining my interest as is being fault free. Now that I have assigned #9 and #10, I will need to think more about the top eight.

 

I am not trying to provoke an argument, or become defensive or adversarial in my responses. But you have hit the proverbial nail on the head with your comments. The OP's coin was already cleaned enough to identify it. It was not in a ball of melded metal which 95% of the time happens to all coins buried for centuries or submerged under water as in a shipwreck. However, to take a "cleaned" coin and clean it again when it is unnecessary to ID it is uncalled for -- and since it is a multiple cleaned coin (cleaned numerous times in order to ID it, then possibly cleaned many times by previous owners after identified, and then adding this last cleaning) it qualifies a harshly cleaned coin.