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Message:: [QUOTE="Insider, post: 2908608, member: 24314"]This article appeared in Numismatic News.  I've copied it here with the permission of the author.  He wrote what I tried to write above.  The important points are in color so you can skip the "fluff."  He made one [correction]. Whizzing occurs in varying degrees<img src="http://numismaster.com/images/uploaded/60807/ArtAvatar28476.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />By F. Michael FazzariFebruary 22, 2017<img src="http://numismaster.com/images/uploaded/60807/ArtLargImg28476.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> John Wheeler, the first superintendent of the Mint at Charlotte, N.C., is quoted as saying, “A man generally talks better when he knows what he is talking about.”  Allow me to steal this thought and change two words, thus, “A man generally writes better when he knows what he is writing about.” I think we can all agree on that. It’s one reason I enjoy reading many of the books and articles written by popular numismatic authors both living and dead. There are too many to mention here. I could fill the page, yet still forget someone. Their research and stories are a legacy to educate all of us. The best of them are popular because they knew what they were writing about. Their words have stood the test of time and provided a stepping stone for additional new information by other numismatists who followed. Obviously, writing is all about putting an idea or factual truth into words and then arranging those words into a certain grammatical order that makes enough sense to convey the subject to an audience. Many fields of endeavor have their own jargon. Many words have specific definitions. Therefore, the words that are used and their meanings become very important when dealing with a specialized subject such as numismatics. For that reason, before we can write,  teach, or understand a subject we must become wordsmiths. Over a period of time, many of the words we use today as collectors have become more specifically defined. That was not always the case.  For example, decades ago, whizzing was the number one form of surface alteration seen on coins. Prior to 1972, the ANA defined “whizzing” as [chemical]mechanical cleaning. Unscrupulous people were taking coins that graded Extra Fine (Note: Back then an XF coin had the details of today’s AU’s) and buffed them using a rotary wire brush to simulate the blazing luster characteristic of a BU coin. In fact, professionally whizzed coins were more attractive than their original counterparts so many collectors were taken in by their beauty. As a rookie authenticator in 1972, I learned to detect surface alterations made to coins such as cleaning and whizzing.  It quickly became apparent to me that there was an unfortunate overlap with word usage among many professionals that became more complex when the factor of degree was considered. What was the difference between cleaning, harsh cleaning and whizzing? I’ve written many times before that most characteristics we use to describe coins can be described using terms that denote advancing stages or degrees. Thus, in many cases, writing about coins can be more complicated than it should be because one man’s hairlines are another man’s harsh cleaning. One of the first things we did at the ANA’s Certification Service was to define whizzing based on what we could see using a stereo microscope.  From then on, the term whizzed only applied to coins having the characteristic thin, pushed-up lip of metal at the edge of its relief design. This built-up deposit (Figure 1) is caused as the wheel’s wire bristles left the surface of the coin.  It is seen as the thin bright, line inside the right loop of the “U.” Even whizzing occurs in degrees!  Figure 2 shows a harsher, mid-range whizzed surface which is rarely encountered as by this stage the coin is totally ruined and unattractive. The primary whizzing lip shows on the digits and a secondary lip is into the surrounding field. Believe it or not, there is another stage of whizzing worse than this. Anything similar we saw on coins without the characteristic lip became a form of mechanical abrasion in all its different degrees. Unfortunately, some of those authors and teachers who know what they are talking about may have failed to pass down our set-in-stone definition to the new generation of collectors that eschews books and numismatic seminars in favor of Internet chat rooms.  Thus, coins with a few random hairlines visible in an Internet photo are called harshly cleaned and even whizzed by many uninformed collectors. On occasion, it seems to me that there are not enough members who know what they are writing about to correct the misuse of terms or educate posters about the existence of degrees with most things they see. When does a small scratch become a gouge? When does a hit become a scrape? At the beginning of the seminars I teach, students view slides and I go over the definitions and degree of most of the characteristics they’ll see on coins so they’ll have a common understanding of the terms we’ll use in class. It may be time to do some of that here [Numismatic News column] in the future.  Obviously, I hope my efforts writing these columns will stand the test of time so that one day, some as yet born professional numismatist will be able to say about me, “He knew what he was writing about.” PS  I missed this <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie46" alt=":facepalm:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /> from cpm9ball in my post above: "[Mint] Luster is created by the (surface) flow lines of the metal when the coin is struck and the metal moves outward toward the rim. Whizzing removes the flow lines." Now, it's Perfect. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie2" alt=";)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]

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