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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;IdesOfMarch01, post: 2582500, member: 39084&quot;]I find this discussion interesting and don&#039;t want it to become defensive and adversarial, but there are some common truths about collecting ancient coins that aren&#039;t relevant for more modern coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s simply a fact that 95%+ and maybe even 99%+ of all ancient coins have been cleaned to some extent.&nbsp; This is inescapable.&nbsp; Most ancient coins are discovered in a state that generally resembles this:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]560813[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Putting aside the observation that these coins are unidentifiable in this state, the natural question an ancient coin collector will ask is &quot;How am I going to fit these into my 2 x 2 flips or my Abafil case?&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>OK, I&#039;m joking, but the point is that other than a very few coins and hoards that have been buried in river silt or other places where air and soil won&#039;t degrade them, all ancient coins have to be cleaned in order to even identify them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Possibly one of the underlying issues here is that you consider the OP coin &quot;harshly&quot; cleaned, as your quote above seems to imply.&nbsp; It is certainly true that ancient coins can be over-cleaned and harshly cleaned, which would be detrimental to their appeal to most collectors.&nbsp; But without exception, other than harshly or destructively cleaned coins, the fact that an ancient coin was cleaned is of no relevance to a true collector of ancient coins.&nbsp; This isn&#039;t a question of personal preference or opinion, it&#039;s simply the reality of ancient coins and ancient coin collectors.</p><p><br /></p><p>Visible cleaning marks (e.g., scratches that aren&#039;t ancient), parts of the coin&#039;s surface being removed during cleaning, tooling, etc., all affect the appeal of the coin to a collector whose evaluation of a coin may be affected by how harshly the coin may have been cleaned, but no collector of ancients pays any attention to the fact that the coin was cleaned <i>per se</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>To a great extent, I think this is what differentiates collectors of ancients from collectors of modern coins.&nbsp; The portrait of Lincoln on a 1909S VDB cent is exactly the same as his portrait on a 1960 cent.&nbsp; The only differentiation is rarity and condition.&nbsp; Soil deposits, bronze disease, etc., rarely if ever attach to a modern coin, so it&#039;s understandable that a cleaned modern coin will be perceived as being less valuable than a pristine, untouched one.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are no pristine, untouched ancient coins fresh from the mint. For ancient coins, the history, artistry, and many other factors determine the collector&#039;s interest in the coin.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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