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Message:: [QUOTE="kaparthy, post: 412, member: 57463"]Uncleaned does mean Unexamined A couple of years ago, I worked with an eBay merchant who put lots like those out.  He got them imported in the usual overseas mail from overseas.  He opened them, sorted them, grouped them, made the lots equal in value, and then put them out on eBay.  I helped.  I had done this before with my own coins: bought a bulk lot, attributed them, 2x2ed them, and retailed them, and wholesaled what did not sell over the table at a coin show. The point is that once you see them and see them often, you do not need to clean them to identify them. Cleaning them and identifying them is a lot of fun, good learning, excellent numismatics, an edifying if not ennobling experience.  I recommend it to everyone... ONCE. So-called "uncleaned" coins never contain any suprises because the dealer was not surprised and neither was the person who sold them to the dealer in the first place.  Anything interesting gets sold in a different market right away.  Only fool thinks that Arabs (or whoever) are idiots who let treasures slip through their fingers while we Americans are sophisticated collectors of rarities. That said, more than once, knowing all this, I too have been tempted to do it again, just for the fun of soaking them and looking them all up.[/QUOTE]