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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Murphy45p, post: 3105765, member: 96005&quot;]I&#039;ve been a collector for some time, but not at the level of many of the posters here.&nbsp; The smart thing to do is to listen to those who have made their living in the business.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m not a dealer by ANY stretch, but I do examine my coins under high magnification, and even to my less experienced eye, when cleaning has taken place, I can see it.</p><p><br /></p><p>When I say that, the follow up question from those prone to clean would be, &quot;How do you know you see ALL the cleaning?&nbsp; If it was done &quot;properly&quot; then you wouldn&#039;t be able to see it.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>That I will concede.&nbsp; But I&#039;m not sure without magnification that you could tell whether it was &quot;proper&quot; or not.&nbsp; So try this, take a COMMON CIRCULATION coin, say a shield penny, recent date, out of pocket change, a corroded one, and experiment with that coin instead of an older more desirable coin that may have numismatic value.&nbsp; Photograph the coin before cleaning, examine it under high magnification and make notes concerning details and luster.&nbsp; Compare it to a proof example or a high MS coin grade to make sure you take everything in.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then go about your cleaning regimen and make notes and take photos and observe in high magnification afterward.&nbsp; If there is any evidence of scratching, even fine scratch lines, diminishing details, loss of natural luster, then you know the method you chose is not effective.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I may be able to save you some time.&nbsp; I can tell you by my own experimentation that I haven&#039;t found a single method that wasn&#039;t observable, and in a negative way.&nbsp; I&#039;ve been all over the place looking for the &quot;proper&quot; method, and as far as I can tell, it doesn&#039;t exist for the common collector.</p><p><br /></p><p>For a coin with layers of crud on the top that hides the details below, it&#039;s tricky.&nbsp; The coin&#039;s details cannot be appreciated by the owner, and potential buyers are purchasing blindly, which would naturally lead to lower prices.&nbsp; In some instances, like digging it up from the ground, the coin may not even be identifiable or other key details such as the date or mintmark may be obscured.&nbsp; It is a dilemma in those cases and some sort of soaking or cleaning may be necessary in order to identify the coin, but that&#039;s not what we&#039;re talking about here.</p><p><br /></p><p>The best advice, and the most common among those in the know who appreciate coins and make their living from them, is don&#039;t clean period.&nbsp; They would every one want to have better coins if available, yet they say don&#039;t clean.&nbsp; I take them at their word.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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