My friend cleans every coin, what do I do?

Okay, thanks. It's just that I occasionally see some completely white EF an VF morgans with pretty good price discounts because of the cleaning/dipping and it's tempting to buy one and just put it away to retone naturally if that would recover most of the value lost from the cleaning. Some of these cleaned circulated morgans look pretty good [to me at least] except that they are unnaturally white.

I've also thought about experimenting by purchasing a discounted dipped EF silver dollar and carrying it around in my pocket for awhile to perhaps turn it into a nice VF. I figure the additional wear will remove traces of cleaning in a few months; after all, that's how they get into that condition in the real world in the first place. It's sort of a low-tech coin restoration technique.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I wish he only did collect common stuff, but he goes for the whole spectrum. Large cents, 2-cent pieces, gold, IHCs, Barber coinage, Morgan dollars, the works.

The last time I tried talking to him about not cleaning coins, he replied, "Oh, I don't clean them, I just restore them. It increases their value."

So I'm going to try and print out some prices to compare cleaned vs. uncleaned because I'm going to see him tomorrow. Maybe I should do a poll so he can see that 100% of the forum members agree cleaning coins is stupid....

 

I tend to respect what moen has to say and I agree with him here. They are his coins and he may do with them as he pleases...I have seen MANY threads like this on the ancients forum as to how much cleaning is too much cleaning and people get equally worked up. No need to bash meon simply because he doesnt get all worked up at the notion of a person cleaning a coin and might even see some of the reactions here a bit over blown...You can have your opinion but you dont have to bash moen for his.

The most I will do with a dirty modern coin is put it in some distilled water for a bit to get any surface dirt off, this has NEVER harmed a coin and makes them look a bit better...but if a person spent his money on a coin and wishes to clean it, its a shame (by todays standards) but its not the end of the world. To be honest I have seen people bemoaning a cleaned coin and thought 'what a nice coin I have a feeling that if I posted a well cleaned coin with a mint condition coin (or a cleaned coin that has been retoned with another toned coin) half the people couldnt even tell. I have always thought it odd that people get so worked up over a cleaning...now a BAD cleaning is a damn shame for sure. Just my 2 centimes

 

Oh, and BTW...as for the reference to priceless paintings...it is common practice to clean them and restore them to how they SHOULD look and not to keep them how they look when they were found in a dirty attic...so if one is to make that reference one should know that paintings are indeed cleaned and restored...There are whole tems of people all over the world cleaning paintings as I type this post.

 

Good post Drusus! I agree with you that some of us get a little too worked up over this issue. I keep many of my most prized pieces in Whitman Classic folders and I know there are people that would be appaulled that I don't have them slabbed. It's how I prefer to collect and view my coins. That's what gives me the most pleasure from my collection.

I'm sure this guy loves to get a new coin and takes a lot of pleasure in cleaning and placing it into his 2X2's. My point is that you can collect any way you wish as long as it is the way you want to do it. Some of these comments really border on snobbishness and I know others were just posted tongue-in-cheek. I guess for some people, it's hard to see beyond the investment aspect and remember that there is also a fun side to collecting coins that has very little to do with money. :high5:

 

Does anyone know where I could find prices to compare cleaned vs. uncleaned coins?

 

I'm not sure that painting restoration is a good analogy to coin cleaning. Paintings are restored by painting over the top of them with fresh paint. Coins are cleaned by removing layers of metal from a coin. One of these is more permanant than the other.

 

Exactly, so it's a good thing then that all coin dealers are honest and always tell the collector that the coin they are buying was cleaned.

 

HAHA...yeah...no doubt I would be truthfull if selling a cleaned coin but the very fact that most probably couldnt tell the difference says something about the subject of cleaning coins and how bad it truely is for a coin and the effects of cleaning. A well cleaned coin simply looks like a mint condition coin, give it time to tone and then even more people would be hard pressed to id a cleaned coin. These factors make me think that the hard and fast no cleaning rule is something that is a bit arbitrary that people have bought into. Just an opinion.

 

Evidently you've never had an expensive coin returned in a body bag or "Net Graded" because it had been cleaned in the past. Believe me, 100 years later and the experts can still tell if a coin was ever cleaned.

You buy into the no cleaning rule real fast when it drops the value of your prized coin about $500!:headbang:

 

Here is an interesting thought i had (IMHO)
So one o f the secrets of making money in coins is to zig when every one zags.
For example: people carefully saving mint state clad coinage through the 70's-90's when no cared about "junk moderns". Some of those quarters in high grade command a LOT of money right now. Or the barber series, which was shunned by collectors when they came out. Try to find ANY of the barber coins (dimes, quarters or halves) in mint state for less then a couple Benjamin's.

Right now cleaned is cleaned, it doesn't matter if it was cleaned lightly or wiped a hundred years ago or someone rubbed the heck out of the coin yesterday with steel wool. The market seems to put the same "stink of death" no matter how the coin was cleaned.

What if, in a decade or so, the market start to accept certain forms of cleaning? think about the ancient coins out there, almost all of them have been cleaned in some form, and as long as its not harsh the market seems to accept it.

I have several "cleaned" coins that i purchased because of their difficulty in finding, or the fact that the cleaning was not harsh. IMO the cleaning was simple wiping by an old time collector.

I have a Pan-Pacific commem that is graded AU-58 details cleaned (part of my latest anacs submission) . I purchased it for $160... an INSANE deal on a relatively difficult coin. The coin is actually really nice, almost full detail, and the cleaning looks "old". To an untrained eye you can't really see the cleaning.

so, even tho i abhor cleaning coins, especially the kind of cleaning that is meant to deceive, I also see it as an opportunity.

That being said, I also had a Columbian exposition with prooflike surfaces that came back cleaned, turning a $60 purchase into $10 instantly. Thats the breaks. Live and learn, etc. etc. etc.

 

thats a real shame...Especially if the coin is still a great coin but is so devalued because of something so minor (IMO) like that.

 

ranchhand,

I agree with you up to a point. Some cleaned morgan and peace dollars sell pretty close to bullion value when they are in VF-EF condition. Sometimes the chance to own a particular coin at a discount becomes an attractive option for someone like me who enjoys circulated coins. Right or wrong, I tend to think of cleaning as just another form of wear. But cleaned coins will always sell at a discount to uncleaned even if those of us at the bottom of the food chain find them acceptable to put into our collections.

 

Well, its his collection, and maybe he never plans on selling his coins and he does not care about the value. He might like how they look when they are cleaned, and he could care less if it ruins the value or not.

-Rob

 

yes, cleaned coins will always be worth less then mint state problem free, just like MS will always be more than AU.
I do believe that the hige spread between some cleaned coins and their non-cleaned sisters will lessen.
for example, the pan pacific i have:
An AU coin without problems is worth around $400, I purchased mine for less than half that.
I believe that at some point the "spread" will narrow for coins that have not been "harshly" cleaned.

Eventually i will replace the coin with a nice choice version, but for now i have a very pretty coin to enjoy that has a lot of potential.

 

It was mentioned that he might being using them as investments, if you are doing that then you are probably dealing with high priced coins and right or wrong, you wouldnt want to clean them because the very real fact is that it lowers the value. I never meant to imply a cleaned coin should be worth mint, it is circulated...which is the main type of coin I collect.

Maybe the fact that my main focus is on ancient coins where cleaning (to a point) is okay and even required and encouraged.

 

CRIKEY MATE!, That's more costly than a Sting-Ray's Poisonous Barb!, well not almost. You just gotta ask yourself, What would Dundee do?

 

I never thought of it that way. ahardy tell youre friend Mike Foster said to use bleach