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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 657278, member: 19463&quot;]The question of cleaning is a &#039;big&#039; thing among coin collectors and the answer depends on which coins you collect.&nbsp; For the most part, anything produced since Columbus discovered America is expected to be untouched by cleaning.&nbsp; The question is so major that mainstream US collectors prefer a &#039;natural&#039; VF to a cleaned uncirculated.&nbsp; Ancient/Medieval coin collectors would like to have to option of being hardcore anti-cleaning but they are realistic enough to know that the number of coins available that have not been cleaned or do not need cleaning is small enough that they could not participate in the hobby so they accept well cleaned coins as improved and poorly cleaned coins as trashed.&nbsp; Learning the difference is a major part of that hobby.</p><p><br /></p><p>You confuse me by the term &#039;lumps of tarnish&#039;.&nbsp; If the surface of a coin is covered by three dimensional lumps, I&#039;d not call it tarnish.&nbsp; That brings up the question of cleaning metal detector find coins and coins like yours that have something on the surface that keeps you from seeing the surface.&nbsp; Certainly you will offend purist collectors who would rather have no coin than a cleaned one but when you start with a lump of dirt the options do not include being a purist.&nbsp;&nbsp; Coins like yours are available that never had lumps hiding the letters.&nbsp; They will sell for more.&nbsp; Whether you halved or doubled the value of your coin has no relation to the price of the purist never cleaned models.&nbsp; The question is whether one prefers being able to see a surface and read a legend or not.&nbsp; There are separate markets for either answer.&nbsp; For me, the question is not whether you cleaned a coin of this period but whether you did it well.&nbsp; As a guideline, if I look at a coin and the first thing I see is the cleaning - that&#039;s very bad.&nbsp; If I see the coin and the question of whether it was cleaned doesn&#039;t come up - that&#039;s good.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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