When I see 1800’s gold coins for sale (screen capture below), are these cleaned? I have many uncirculated 1800’s gold coins and they’re not this clean, in fact a lot of them have tarnished to a slightly darker gold patina/color through the years. Mine also have some blank around the edges of stars and dates. The image below is not like that. If you clean a gold coin to make the gold standout, do you lower its value like a copper coin?
Not sure what you mean, cleaning any coin is a bad idea. There is a difference between cleaning and restoration. I would advise you to post some photos or send the coin to a professional.
Gold doesn't change or tarnish in the same way you see from silver. You will see gold recovered from archeological sites that looks as it did a thousand year ago. Now minted gold contains a small mix of alloys and those alloys will tarnish. But gold doesn't.
Gold coins should not be sent cleaned. If that coin was cleaned there is a way that NGC can find out using special lighting equipment. Then they would give it a Details grade. Not a Mint State grade.
Cleaning coins is rarely ever a good idea. I have found it interesting, however, that the rise in precious metals values has wiped a lot of those premiums out. I sold a $5 Indian and 2 $2.5 Indians to a coin shop within the past several months. One of the $2.5 Indians had been cleaned, but I got the same price for it as the other due to melt being so high. Maybe one day it will again make a difference in price. The only difference I see currently is as a graded coin. It doesn't seem worth it to grade a coin that will only come back "details," but perhaps so if it is MS.
It straight graded so not cleaned. A cleaned coin is a details coin. It would be noted on the slab label. Gold is entirely different from silver in the way it tarnishes and reacts to the environment. And it’s never a good idea to clean a coin.
Just my opinion - but slightly darker gold patina looks nicer to me than the pale gold like in the picture. So I would just leave them alone.
There are coins that have foreign matter (dirt, grease, etc) that can be cleaned, but this is best left to an expert or at least someone with experience (which usually means they have learned from the coins they damaged). Almost all ancient coins have been cleaned because they are typically found in dirt, but even they can be ruined by harsh or improper cleaning. Beyond that, the general word is never clean a coin. You can always change your mind and clean one later, but you can almost never go back and "unclean" what you have harmed.
