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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2877012, member: 19463&quot;]I can accept Insider&#039;s definition with very few reservations:</p><p>1. I would add the word &quot;selective&quot; in several places to separate coins whose details were favored as opposed to getting the same treatment as the whole coin.&nbsp; This would allow placing a coin in your pocket or feeding it to a goat as forms of cleaning rather than a term more nefarious.</p><p><br /></p><p>2. &quot;Addition&quot; is a term I don&#039;t like because it suggests the possibility of adding material to provide something to cut away.&nbsp; The red letter notes cover this but I&#039;d prefer a word like &quot;modification&quot;.&nbsp; Addition is a repair.&nbsp; A repair is not necessarily worse than tooling or even heavy handed smoothing poorly executed.&nbsp; It can be hard to tell if a smoothed or tooled coin has a plug.&nbsp; In general, any modification includes a free licence for lower level sins.&nbsp; Tooled coins are also smoothed; repaired coins are either smoothed, tooled or both and are not required to be noted as such separately. </p><p><br /></p><p>3.&nbsp; No one can show an example of &#039;good&#039; smoothing unless they are willing to provide before and after images and admit to doing it.&nbsp; This is the classic question of whether a tree falling in an empty forest makes a sound.&nbsp; If you can tell what was done, it could have been done better.&nbsp; If no one can tell it was done..... was it?&nbsp; &quot;All ancients were cleaned&quot; is a situation I can accept as fact.&nbsp; &quot;All smooth coins were smoothed&quot; is conspiracy theory.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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