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<p>[QUOTE="dougsmit, post: 4548511, member: 19463"]All ancient coins have a point below which removing more material will make the coin worse rather than better. On silvered coins with a silver wash that was a fraction of a millimeter thick, this point is very hard to find. This coin has already passed the point of cleaning. You might find it better looking if all of the silver were gone but the chance of reversing what has already been lost is zero. It has already lost most of the coin surface on which the silvering once rested. Those places are not going to improve. The photo shows a coin with the dirt removed and much excavation into the body of the coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here is a fact we do not like to face: Professionals who handle thousands of newly found coins make their living looking at lumps and deciding which ones are likely to clean up into a nice coin and which ones should be sold off to people who want to try themselves and hope for a miracle. They make some mistakes but not as many as you would like. Here on Coin Talk, we have had hundreds of threads showing the results of members having fun trying their hand at cleaning. Their results would be better if they had a random selection of found coins completely unsorted but there is no such things as unsorted finds. Those advertised as such may not have been sorted by their current owner but the people who found the coins, at a minimum, separated the best from the worst before wholesaling them to a broker who can ID coins with his fingers better than many of us can with all the resources available to us. The important thing about cleaning is having a good grip on when to stop and when further action will help. Cleaning coins can be fun but those amateurs who are happy with their results tend to be relying on their own definition of what is good rather than absolute perfection. </p><p><br /></p><p>Your coin has a different mintmark and you obverse legend includes one additional title. Otherwise, it is similar to the one below.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1125968[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="dougsmit, post: 4548511, member: 19463"]All ancient coins have a point below which removing more material will make the coin worse rather than better. On silvered coins with a silver wash that was a fraction of a millimeter thick, this point is very hard to find. This coin has already passed the point of cleaning. You might find it better looking if all of the silver were gone but the chance of reversing what has already been lost is zero. It has already lost most of the coin surface on which the silvering once rested. Those places are not going to improve. The photo shows a coin with the dirt removed and much excavation into the body of the coin. Here is a fact we do not like to face: Professionals who handle thousands of newly found coins make their living looking at lumps and deciding which ones are likely to clean up into a nice coin and which ones should be sold off to people who want to try themselves and hope for a miracle. They make some mistakes but not as many as you would like. Here on Coin Talk, we have had hundreds of threads showing the results of members having fun trying their hand at cleaning. Their results would be better if they had a random selection of found coins completely unsorted but there is no such things as unsorted finds. Those advertised as such may not have been sorted by their current owner but the people who found the coins, at a minimum, separated the best from the worst before wholesaling them to a broker who can ID coins with his fingers better than many of us can with all the resources available to us. The important thing about cleaning is having a good grip on when to stop and when further action will help. Cleaning coins can be fun but those amateurs who are happy with their results tend to be relying on their own definition of what is good rather than absolute perfection. Your coin has a different mintmark and you obverse legend includes one additional title. Otherwise, it is similar to the one below. [ATTACH=full]1125968[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]
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