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Message:: [QUOTE="John Burgess, post: 4770500, member: 105098"]I won't <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /> I know exactly what you are talking about. there's a whole discussion here on this lol, many of them, and there's a whole "acetone isn't dipping or cleaning because it doesn't remove metal" it has a pH of 7 so technically it's not an acid or a base this is true, but it's a chemical exposure, hard to argue with that.Personally, I like to start softest possible with distilled water rinse, and try acetone if that doesn't do it but I've just stuck with distilled water so far for myself. the "dip" with a "cleaner" is a last resort situation, and it's situational. I mean if a coin is well traveled and worn like a VF, and you strip off the toning by dipping, there something obviously wrong there. it looks wrong to the eye and isn't market acceptable, However if it's an ugly toned MS66, and you make it blast white for the first time in it's lifespan, and it improves the situation and appearance of the coin, It can grade even higher on the eye appeal factor. but this isn't all cases. there's just as many dipped coins that benefit from it as there are coins that were hurt by it. once you've taken off the toning, you can uncover hairlines that were unnoticed, or metal streaking that went unnoticed due to the toning you just removed. It doesn't always work out, and a dipped coin, I am told, rarely re-tones nicely and ends up needing to be dipped again, and again until it's overdipped and lifeless of luster. it's starts a chain of dipping better not to have started in some cases. the fact is, people love pretty toned coins, or they love blast white clean appearing coins, everyone hates a "dog" that's ugly. If a coins been around 100 years, it's not going to be blast white without a cleaning happening. there's going to be some sort of toning happening because that what metals do over time. If you look at the greatest collections known, none of their silver is going to be blast white, and their gold won't be pristine either, there will be toning. if you bought one of those gems, and dipped it, it would be a disaster for the value and the grade. it would be detrimental. and yeah, the reality is, most everything has been cleaned at some point to some extent. there's "looks good!" and there's "what the heck happened? noooooooo..." as the results. But there's a market segment that wants clean blast white silver. there's no getting around that. PCGS and NGC interprets "cleaning" as surface damage due to any form of abrasive cleaning. Same goes for dipping, if it's done improperly or too many times and damages the surface it's getting details grade, but they do straight grade dipped coins that should have toning after 100+years quite frequently. And I'm just killing time at work during the pandemic slowdown. I can literally research and write a book currently hahaha.  it's cool for a dealer to lowball your uncleaned coin and dip it and sell it fr more, or lowball you for dipping a coin and then dip it themselves and mark it up in their case, or send it for conservation without details, and it's fine for NGC or PCGS to dip coins when necessary and remove toning. But if us non-business folks do it, we get the pointy end of the stick, got it. LOL. The take away is, the TPGs and especially the dealers are going to figure out how they can make money or lowball you doesn't matter what you do, you could say "i didn't clean or dip anything" and they will reply "someone has". Again we are back to "opinions" and then TPG is kinda worthless at solving a problem they went into business to solve.[/QUOTE]

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