I have a bunch of 90% silver coins I cleaned with a jewlrey polishing cloth made for silver and it just seems to take off the dirt and make the coins more brilllant is this bad for the value of the coins or is it okay because I dont want to continue doing it and find out the coins are loosing value!!
It's about as bad as you can imagine. Cleaned coins often struggle to sell at even 10% of the uncleaned value. (Infact they'll probably sell only on bullion value now cos they have no collector value left.) If i were you i wouldn't clean anymore.
There are even some collector's out there who sell coins every now and again, that if they know a customer is cleaning coins, they will refuse service to them ever again....Or only let them buy coins that have already been cleaned...
And, by the way, welcome to the forum, Ferrari! We're glad to have you. Cleaning coins in any way is just a pet peeve of most of us.
Its not all the bad I have come to find out because I thought it would be alot of my coins but the only coins I have that look like they have been cleaned are about 15 buffalos and 17 mercury dimes and I cleaned a couple walking libery halves and frankin halves and 2 barber half dollars but I dont think the half dollars are too bad because they still look somewhat dirty.
Yeah it's the scratches that count though... the more scratches a coin has in general terms the less it's worth.
The other problem is what the cleaning does to the luster. Even a light cleaning will change the luster. Even though the coin appears shiny after cleaning, the cartwheel luster is gone.
What happens is you get a 'flat' lustre. Compare a naturally shiny coin and you get a lustre with depth to it, it's kinda 3D, it's hard to describe but if you could look at a naturally lustrous coin with the edge directly opposite your eye and look across the obverse plain, if the shininess was pictured in relief you'd see crests and troughs to the lustre like rolling countryside. The highest parts around the legend the lowest in the fields. A cleaned coin would look like a flat plain, kinda like countryside that has recently been levelled for a housing development, unnatural, undesirable but someone thought it necessary.
If one of those 90% silver coins just happened to be a rare date with some value, cleaning it...even with silver cloth...would reduce the value dramatically. I've seen $300 coins that a simple cleaning had transformed into $30 coins. Sorry but there's just never a time when cleaning a coin is ok...leave them dirty and they'll be worth more, both today and for future generations.
The technical term for "dirty" is "patinated." Coins look shiny when they are new, so some people try to make coins look "new" again by polishing them. The problem is that you cannot put detail back on a coin, once it is worn off. So, as a result, cleaning a worn coin just leaves you with a worn coin that has been cleaned. Whatever natural character it had is gone. I once saw a coin that had been graded Poor-0 by PCGS, but it was in a PCGS holder. In other words, this early Federal Large Cent had been worn flat, but it still had original surfaces. Apparently, no one had cleaned it in a 100 years or more. It looked natural. If the coin had been cleaned -- especially if it had been wiped with a silver cleaning cloth yesterday -- PCGS would have refused to grade the coin at all. Most collectors find a lot of charm in a 19th century coin with honest wear and original surfaces. I know I do. If you like "shiny" coins, you should buy them that way. Mint State coins cost more, but they look nice. Michael "showing honest wear of my own"
I was thinking the same thing, bromac. As a matter of fact, I liked everything about post # 11. Good job.
