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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2821058, member: 19463&quot;]I agree with what Glenn wrote in points 1-4 but differ after that. I see #5 electrolysis not as a medical treatment like you get at a doctor&#039;s office or hospital but the equivalent of a post-mortem exam in the morgue.&nbsp; You don&#039;t learn what the coin is but what it was before it died.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>My second disagreement comes in the &#039;no harm&#039; assessment.&nbsp;&nbsp; Coin cleaning is a second hobby separate from coin collecting.&nbsp; If a person tries and fails or decides it is more trouble than it is worth they end to blame the hobby of ancient coins and decide to collect something that is not so labor intensive like proof sets.&nbsp; If you collect, study, enjoy coins first and then decide you want to take on a side hobby (there are others like photography, die studies &amp; fly-specking minor variations) I support the idea fully.&nbsp; None of these side hobbies are great paths into the main hobby - the coins.&nbsp; We are regularly asked to identify ghosts of former coins that have been destroyed by millennia of corrosion and minutes of cleaning.&nbsp; Owners of such coins would not have to ask if they had started by studying coins with details intact.&nbsp; I once declared that about 80% of the coins I had seen in uncleaned lots commonly sold to beginners fell into one of twelve groups and suggested those cleaning such coins might benefit from recognizing those twelve.&nbsp; </p><p><a href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/uncleaned.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/uncleaned.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/uncleaned.html</a></p><p>My math may be faulty but I do remain of the opinion that the proper <b>Order of Operations</b> for studying (not necessarily owning) coins is the following:</p><p>1. <b>P</b>erfect - Learn what the coins looked like in the mind of the designer when the dies were made and mint workers did good work.&nbsp; You do not have to own them but you should recognize them</p><p><br /></p><p>2. <b>E</b>xceptional -&nbsp; Learn what it is reasonable to expect of a well made coin that circulated as money but really did not suffer greatly.&nbsp; These are not overly worn, corroded, damaged or anything evil - just old.</p><p><br /></p><p>3.&nbsp; <b>M</b>iddle of the Road - Learn to allow for what wears off coins and what happens when Perfect and Exceptional coins meet up with normal stress of being what they were meant to be.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>4.&nbsp; <b>D</b>irty - Realize that ancient coins usually spent some time buried in the ground and came out with soil or something more sinister adhering to the surfaces.&nbsp; The big thing to learn here is how to tell the ones in pile #4 that have a chance of being freed from that dirt and rising to a higher state.&nbsp; Some people are very good at this. </p><p><br /></p><p>5.&nbsp; <b>A</b>wful - These are the fun coins.&nbsp; We buy them realizing that nothing will come of cleaning off the dirt except the experience and the hope that one in a thousand will turn out to be a little interesting.&nbsp; There is the uncleaned equivalent of a lottery ticket actually worth the dollar you paid for it not counting the fun you had playing in the dirt. Sure there is the lottery ticket coin worth a Million and they come out almost as often do the Powerball winners.&nbsp; Like Lottery Tickets, Class #5 coins only stay #5 for one owner/looker.&nbsp; After it has been identified and evaluated it becomes a 3 or a 6.</p><p><br /></p><p>6.&nbsp; <b>S</b>ellers - Sadly these are the coins that those &#039;in the know&#039; looked at and decided they were not worth the effort and the ones that were cleaned to some degree and discovered to be really worthless.&nbsp; What do we do with them?&nbsp; Sell them to someone else, of course.&nbsp;&nbsp; Reapplying dirt is cheating and no one would do that, would they?</p><p><br /></p><p>My point here is that class 6 coins are not the place to start.&nbsp; If you did the study of 1, 2 and 3 so you might recognize #4 with hope, I can live with you buying them.&nbsp; What I have issue with is the market we see in group 6 coins over and over and over again.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>If you did not pick up that my suggested order of operations was PEMDAS, shame on your 4th grade teacher. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie81" alt=":shifty:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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