What Does Whizzed Mean?

Or more specifically, harshly polished, often with a wire wheel. A dictionary of coin lingo: http://www.pcgs.com/lingo.chtml

Whizzing is a method of improving the appearance of a coin using mechanical methods such as a rotary tool and a fine wire brush. one way to tell a coin that has been whizzed is there is usually build up around the features of the coin. when they use a fine wire brush to make the feilds deeper than they originally are and make the details stand out more they cant use it to get into the details very well so the buildup occurs especially around the date and that is one thing I look for to help identify a whizzed coin. there is a pretty good guide on ebay guides to help identify whizzed Shield nickels but the same thing applies to all whizzed coins, the guide can be found here and is a pretty good read http://reviews.ebay.com/Identifying...1:LISTINGS:1

You will also see "flow lines" in certain directions. A bad whizzer, you will see the lines going in more than 1 direction. Not only will the you see build up on the date, you can actually see the build up anywhere on the coin where features are higher than the back field. I won't call a whizzed coin as "just cleaned", why? because it is a much more "severe" way of cleaning. To me, since I purchased a whizzed $20 Gold Saint, it IS the most severe way of cleaning a coin, some do it to hide a real bad flaw since you can move the metal around some. Needless to say, a whizzed coin is IMHO, ruined the coin forever--It cannot be restored. Makes me real angry when I see this grrrr--If I could put my hands on the whizzer, I would use the tool on him/her to see how s/he likes it--