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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Insider, post: 7517108, member: 24314&quot;]Inspector43, posted: &quot;I guess what you are saying is that <i><b>smoothing is the act of covering up tooling</b></i>. I can&#039;t see anything being considered tooling if the action never touches the original surface. If I remove nearly all of the 2000 year build up of dirt but never get to the base metal, how can that be tooling? I will smooth the remaining crud to blend the microscopic lines left in the final layers of crud without touching the original base metal. It is too bad that we live in a time and place where there is so little trust. It&#039;s probably been like that forever though. It is good, though, that my coins are never intended to leave home. Thanks for the feedback as I will modify my vocabulary.</p><p><br /></p><p>NO, smoothing is a sneaky little evasion of what is being done to a coin.&nbsp; Removing a crust of corrosion is one form of tooling and in 50+ years of looking at a lot of coins I have NEVER seen one of these altered coins that has not damaged the original surface BECAUSE there was no original surface remaining.&nbsp; It was corroded away!&nbsp; Smoothing to remove the pits left from corrosion is tooling also.</p><p><br /></p><p>Smoothing is just a word someone devised to sell altered coins more easily and for more money.&nbsp; It would be like putting a rusty car repaired w/bondo and fiberglass covered with a coat of paint up for sale as a &quot;restoration.&quot; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie85" alt=":smuggrin:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>This has NOTHING to do with trust or the time we live. Folks have been altering coins with &quot;tools&quot; for centuries - some jobs come out better than others.</p><p><br /></p><p>I applaud folks who take corroded or damaged coins and make them pretty.&nbsp; Some make a living doing it.&nbsp; That does not change the fact that the coins have been altered.</p><p><br /></p><p>PS&nbsp; Technicians removing rock around fossils are also tooling the matrix around the specimen.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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