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Message:: [QUOTE="IdesOfMarch01, post: 2876857, member: 39084"]Thanks. When I evaluate potential coins for acquisition, I try to envision those coins relative to how they may have looked after they were originally minted. For example, I have any number of coins that display a weak strike in certain areas, and if the devices in those areas had been enhanced by smoothing the surrounding fields, then the coin would be unacceptable even though others may consider it just to be smoothing. On the other hand, I realize that removal of surface encrustations will inevitably smooth the surface somewhat and may even remove small amounts of the patina or metal that adheres to the encrustation when it's removed.  As long as this isn't overly done, I consider such coins acceptable. Here's an example of two similar coins, the top one of which (mine) displays acceptable cleaning and whatever smoothing (I can't really detect it), and the bottom one showing overly smoothed surfaces that neither my dealer nor I would consider acceptable: [ATTACH=full]688700[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]688702[/ATTACH] I note that in the lower coin, Caligula's cheek and neck area are much smoother than my coin, and the field in front of Caligula's portrait has been overly smoothed all the way to the legend between 8 and 10 o'clock. By the way, I wouldn't necessarily criticize someone for buying the lower coin.  By my definition of tooling, it isn't tooled, but it IS overly smoothed.[/QUOTE]