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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 1055166, member: 19463&quot;]I find it regrettable that some of use give answers that show now clue as to the nature of ancient coins (Does NCS even touch ancient coins?) especially coins that may be worth less than the minimum fees even if restored to mint state.&nbsp; I find it more regrettable that so many coins are bought and sold to be butchered in attempts to &#039;improve&#039; them.&nbsp; I guess I should be willing to accept as improved coins that have been roughly cleaned to allow identification but it still hurts to see coins made ugly even if they started uglier.&nbsp; I have opinions.&nbsp; Yours may differ:</p><p><br /></p><p>1. 95% of all &#039;uncleaned&#039; ancient coins are not cleanable to a degree that would make them welcome in the even moderately discriminating collections.&nbsp; Fortunately there are a lot of coins found so the 5% will include some winners.</p><p><br /></p><p>2. There are experts in cleaning but their most important skill is not scraping and boiling but deciding what should be done to any given coin.&nbsp; The diagnosis is more difficult than the actual cleaning that follows.&nbsp; Washing is one thing but what you do after the wash and when you give up and decide the coin is as good as it will get is a real skill I have not developed.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>3. Whenever I see examples of coins improved by extreme means (chemical and electronic), I can&#039;t help wishing the poor thing had just been allowed to die in peace.&nbsp; There are coins that can be improved by more extreme cleaning but most&nbsp; of what ends up as a good looking coin started as one the site Gao&nbsp; linked above classified as in the first group not even needing the olive&nbsp; oil step.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>4.&nbsp; Cleaning the uncleanable is a separate hobby from collecting coins.&nbsp; If you value your time at all you may want to consider buying the coins separated out by the finders as cleanable rather than spending hours working on a $1 lump with the hope of making it a $10 coin. I would be more hopeful of being able to learn to do this if even some of the examples shown &#039;before and after&#039; were actually good looking coins (to my definition) &#039;after&#039;.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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