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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Cherd, post: 3047678, member: 24754&quot;]I&#039;ve been reading through the last handful of posts in response to this subject, and I&#039;m finding it difficult to formulate meaningful responses. That&#039;s because the majority of what is being said actually aligns with the points that I&#039;ve been trying to make, however, is presented as being in disagreement. I think that we are all of the same opinion for the most part, and the back and forth can be chalked up to mis-interpretations of what the other is saying. So I&#039;ll take a shot at whittling things down to what I see as the major sticking point.</p><p><br /></p><p>First off, in this context, &quot;cleaning&quot; means an action that alters the surface of the coin in some way (Not picking off dirt or dipping in water). The whole modern aversion to cleaning isn&#039;t because people don&#039;t like cleaning in general, it&#039;s because the purists have trended toward an extreme preference for &quot;original&quot; surfaces and everyone else has followed along (I&#039;m not indicating that I have a problem with this). Now, the definition of &quot;original&quot; is another debate all together, but for the sake of argument, lets say it&#039;s &quot;a surface that hasn&#039;t been intentionally, physically or chemically altered for the sake of improving appearance&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>The debate seems to have shifted toward delineations in &quot;cleaning&quot; skill level between &quot;professionals&quot; and lay people. On this we agree. I could restore an old car in my garage, but the results will be waaaay better if I pay a professional, fair enough. But, no matter the quality of the work, a restoration was done either way. And, the car is no more-or-less &quot;original&quot; regardless of who did the work. From an &quot;original&quot; perspective, there is no better or worse, there&#039;s only &quot;yes or no&quot; (original or not).</p><p><br /></p><p><b>&quot;If you can&#039;t tell that it is cleaned, then it&#039;s not cleaned&quot;</b>:: This is the key sticking-point that we seem to have here. The real question is:</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Do you truly value original surfaces? Or are you anti-cleaning because everyone else is anti-cleaning?&quot; (AKA: anti-cleaning because it decreases value)</p><p><br /></p><p>This isn&#039;t a loaded question. I&#039;ll go ahead and admit that, while I don&#039;t feel strongly one way or the other, I probably fall more into the later category. But, if you &quot;truly value original surfaces&quot;, then the &quot;if you can&#039;t tell that it is cleaned&quot; definition holds no water. What I hear is, &quot;I prefer a more aesthetically pleasing, altered coin as long as it was done so well that nobody can tell.&quot; Reworded: &quot;I don&#039;t value original surfaces, I prefer aesthetics&quot;. Another way: &quot;I&#039;m willing to improve aesthetics as long as it doesn&#039;t decrease the value (nobody can tell)&quot;. And this is all fine! Collect how you want!</p><p><br /></p><p>But, being of this frame of mind, it jumps out at me when people say that cleaning is bad because it alters the surface, and then proceed to recommend that kind of thing should be left to professionals. This is contradictory if originality is the primary consideration.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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