Never Clean Your Coins!

@Shirayasha

Yes, they LOOK nice. But the problem is that collectors prefer a coin to be as close to original as possible. Buying a cleaned coin, to most collectors, is like buying a rare painting that someone decided to try to make look better by peeling the original paint off of an old masterpiece and replacing it with their own work.

And with a coin it is not possible to "unclean" it b/c the cleaning process actually removes a layer of the surface of the coin.


edited for spelling

They're pretty much only useful for arts and crafts now. :-(

wonder if an 1877 is in there

Yes, you can too reverse cleaning...kind of. Carry those pennies in your pocket (not all at once of course) and the surfaces will be worn back to a circulated condition. The coin will have dropped a few grades, but its not like they were MS. That works for nasty looking cleanings where it looks like they did use a belt sander.

And as I said, those werent "cleaned" per se but polished. They wouldnt use a belt sander for whizzing them...



With the white polishing tips...there ya go!

@earle

yea I can understand why they would not want their coins cleaned, since its taking away from the original masterpiece. but some people in this thread seem to think the coins are worthless at this stage, and I would disagree, just because I still see some value left in those shiny Indian cents (worth way more than a penny)

Earl: I don't see what you are complaining about. Looks fine to me.

What kind of arts and crafts are YOU doing?

Personally, if I could pick that lot up for twenty bucks, I'd take it. I don't have a problem with cleaned coins--just leave them out of flips to let them reoxidize, maybe throw in my pocket change a few at a time. As mentioned above, it'd take them down a few grades, but any BU value they might have had is gone now anyway.