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Message:: [QUOTE="Catbert, post: 500818, member: 12718"]"It's sad, but many researchers, dealers and long-time collectors believe that about 80% of all 20th Century silver coins and 98% of 19th Century and earlier silver coins have been cleaned or at the very least, dipped by somebody." (The above statement came from a contest thread Doug created that links to a page showing artificially toned versus natural toned coins.) If true, I guess I never stopped to consider how bad the problem is and how depressing this is to collectors that love and seek to collect original coins.  Another thought occured to me that perhaps we are too hard on people who own these (and I know my seated dollar was once lightly cleaned) in the sense that some communicate disdain for their purchase (as opposed to education of what they bought). What do you think?[/QUOTE]