i know your never supposed to clean coins but i dont see how you could even tell you cleaned it... just as an test i took a silver dime badly covered with green slim and took a little vinigar and rubed the coin with my finger NO cloth and it turned out greatt i mean if you clean with out a cloth with vinigar and after run it under cold water and lightl damp it with a tissue how would they ever tell if you sent the coin in for grading. ok let me have it lol
Cleaning messes up the surface texture - the coin's skin. The best TPGs check under high magnification. Cleaning is a BUST for sure.
don't, if you look at them long enough they will start to look beautiful just the way they are,,,,,,,,,,,and before you know it you will be looking for and collecting aged,toned coins............i did.......natural....it's the only way... a vintage automobile should be polished and clean a coin should show it's history...just my 2 cents........
It's easy once you know what you are looking at, really. When you don't know what you are looking at, you'd swear there nothing even there.
Heres why its a bad idea to clean your coins. My dime here is worth only half of what its supposed to, because it was cleaned. Would you have cleaned this coin if it had been yours?
If the coin is badly covered with green slime to begin with, and isn't a key date, and is already circulated, then a light cleaning probably won't hurt the value much because the value probably wasn't much to begin with, and green coins aren't hot sellers. The type of coin you described probably shouldn't be sent to a TPG to begin with because it's a waste of money and they will most likely detect the cleaning even if lesser mortals can't. Otherwise, under most circumstances cleaning will reduce the value of your coins, often to melt value.
Indianhead, if you don't mind me asking, is that currently in an anacs net or details holder? If so, and you ever plan to sell, I personally think NGC or PCGS would grade that in spite of the cleaning.
Yes you can tell. It's just that you haven't looked at it throughly with a hand lens. After a few tries, you perhaps will understand that no matter how hard you try to clean coins, the conclusion is, there is no such thing as miracle cleaners. Only experts know how to handle this and there is a good reason why conservation is a very difficult and restricted field. You should do some experiment with some cheap coins that you pull from circuation. Rather than believing us, the best thing to do is to experiment and convience that it isn't necessary the case that cleaning coins are easy to disguise. Realistically, if your coin have been pulled from circulation, chances are that it has scratches, wears and such. If it is in a shiny condition with such scratches and wear, I would highly doubt that's possible that it's not cleaned and yet has those condition. Furthermore, by cleaning silver coins using vinegar and such, most of the time, after you give it a period of time, the surface WILL oxidize, most of the time turning into ugly toning which is rarely desired especially if it's artifical.
Also vinegar is a mild acid. So the cleaning etches the surface and makes it more suseptible to faster tarnishing. If it isn't completely rinsed/neutralized, the acid will over time continue to corrode the surfaces.
Hi Zane...yes it is currently in an anacs holder. Its graded AG3 Details Cleaned by ANACS. I was thinking of getting it cross graded by another TPG co. but you have to be kind of leary of trusting the P.O. with something of that value, but, I guess people have sent much more expensive coins in the mail to be graded. Although its not my most valuable coin, I'm still reluctant. P.S.- Of course I dont mind you asking.
