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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;IdesOfMarch01, post: 2400127, member: 39084&quot;]EVERY ancient coin has been cleaned, even gold coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>For bronze coins, how do you define the difference between &quot;cleaning&quot; and &quot;smoothing?&quot;&nbsp; Is scraping &quot;...away hard surface deposits on a coin whose surface itself is clearly unstable (signs of pitting)...&quot; unacceptable if those hard deposits are dirt or otherwise not part of the metal or patina?&nbsp; And how does anyone know where the hard deposits stop and the patina starts, at least until some of the surface deposit has been removed?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>While I generally agree with Doug&#039;s definition, even removing non-patina and non-metal surface imperfections (not just patina) is smoothing -- i.e., the surface of the coin becomes smoother after the removal of this material.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I personally find <i>light</i> smoothing acceptable.&nbsp; There&#039;s really nothing that can be done about this anyway, since even the highest quality bronzes with a long provenance were cleaned decades or centuries ago, and if a collector restricted his/her collection to &quot;non-smoothed&quot; bronzes you&#039;d be unable to find any.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I think Doug&#039;s differentiation (quoted above) is the quasi-industry-standard for distinguishing smoothing from tooling.&nbsp; It also agrees with what my dealer, who has been in the ancient coin business for 40 years, uses to determine smoothing vs. tooling.&nbsp; So I&#039;ll defer to the knowledge and experience of these experts on the topic of smoothing vs. tooling -- these two alterations are not one and the same.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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