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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dayriser, post: 761430, member: 21610&quot;]Just a couple observations... I have seen some very dogmatic views in this particular thread... Guess that is what happens when an issue strikes close to home... One of the above posts, however is worded in such a way that it is bound to draw disagreement... One statement made is that &quot;copper is the most reactive of all the coinage metals&quot;... Use of a superlative like that is not wise generally speaking... Copper is a fairly reactive metal, but is less reactive than several others that are used in coinage... Some like molybdenum, used less commonly, and others like manganese used far more so, in this country and others... &quot;virtually anything causes it to tone almost immediately&quot;... Same problem here... There are many chemicals that would cause many of the coins we see to tone more rapidly than natural, but to say &#039;virtually anything&#039; would make it tone &#039;almost immediately&#039; seems not to take into account the number of different substances and methods that this whole thread is discussing... There are many ways to REMOVE the toning of a coin, or SLOW it&#039;s future toning... Then we read that &quot;all coins and no exceptions begin to tone from the instant they are minted&quot;, while very nearly true on a molecular level, it&#039;s a little misleading... Very few coins would show sufficient toning in, say, a week, or a month that even the most adept expert would call it a toned coin... So all we really are talking about is someone taking the time necessary to find a way to protect a coin to a reasonable degree within a fairly reasonable time from the time it leaves the mint... But that is covered next when we are told that collectors had NO MEANS to protect coins... Again, a superlative statement that is not entirely true... Many people in the last couple hundred years were not &#039;collectors&#039;, and simply put coins in jars, many coins were lost to couches, and the earth, and jars buried IN couches, or IN the earth... Air tight containers have been around for thousands of years... It wouldn&#039;t take any real miracle for joe schmoe at the turn of the century to stumble across a fairly effective way to keep air and moisture away from a given stack of coins... (and they didn&#039;t use very much PVC at the turn of the century either)...</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Anyway, I am no expert on coin cleaning... I am merely pointing out that using phrases like &#039;undeniable and irrefutatable&#039; does not make your statements undeniable and irrefutable... It simply makes the reader feel as if you are saying his opinion is meaningless to offer... Saying something NEVER happens, is rarely a safe bet... Saying something could NOT be done is rarely a safe bet...&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>What I do know is that I have seen a box of coins sitting in my room, some silver, some gold, some copper, that look the same today as the day they were put in there and they were collected from someone who had kept them in a bag for 40 plus years... Now neither of us cleaned them, and yet here they sit... Some have very clear toning while others from the same year/mint have very limited toning, if any, to the naked eye... Some look just downright poor, and others look so good as to make me wonder how they could hold up so well, given that the prior owner never took care of them... Bottom line is that coins take a myriad routes to get to their current resting place in my collection, and there are countless variables that go into the final presentation of a coin... It is likely very inaccurate to attribute a number like 80% to the overall number of coins that have been cleaned when your experience has largely been with dealers as you stated... I would bet that the actual percentage of coins that makes it to a dealer is on the smallish side as is the percentage of coins in personal collections that comes from dealers... </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I would also ask, if 80 percent of all coins that still look like something akin to the way they left the mint are simply cleaned or dipped, then why does it clearly hurt the value... If everyone is doing it, if it is so widespread, so rampant as we are being told, then the value shouldn&#039;t even be affected by it, and thereby this discussion if superfluous anyway, right?..</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Anyway, I don&#039;t so much disagree that there is a lot of cleaning going on, as much as the way it is being delivered... That if someone does not completely agree, then it is because they are not using THE FACTS, and any SAVVY collector worth his salt knows that most coins are cleaned and doctored... Well, it is really late, but i appreciate being able to throw in my little bit... </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>B[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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