"Coins N Cards" Ebayer: Contributing To The Loss Of "Original" Coins

Grading company offering coin conservation is just another way these businesses make a profit. That is what businesses do. They know they are removing an original surface, but that is where the money leads them, so they do it. Despite what people would LIKE to believe, the TPGs are NOT solely about what is best for the hobby, they are about keeping their own business alive and making a living.
By offering great online resources, they improve their public relations and make even more. This is not evil. Its just business.

While on most occasions I would agree with you, there are rare instances where an individual outside of the professional grading business has the knowledge and ability to properly conserve a coin. Does the seller in question? That I could not answer as I do not own any from him, nor have I seen one first hand. The one reply I must agree with 100% is from atticguy. Assume that ALL coins in the raw prior to 1950 were cleaned. Even those with "original" patina as they also may have gone through proper conservation years ago.

I do not like tarnished coins at all, but that is beside the point here. The color you get form a "properly conserved" dip that TPGs do not seem to mind is definitely less actual-silver-colored than an original "blast white" mint surface luster. It is easy to see the difference especially when a dipped "blast white" and original mint "blast white" are side by side.

I do prefer the mint luster for sure.

If I owned a dime like this one, and it was in the condition shown in the first picture, I would have given it an acetone dip, used a porcupine quill to remove the spot of dirt at 2:00 and 5:00 on the OBV, and possibly (cannot tell from pics) taken the quill to the REV faces as well.

Depending on what was left, I would probably see if anyone was interested in a tarnished coin for its color. I realize natural and slow tarnishing makes different colors than forced tarnishing. So if someone wanted to trade me an actual mint white one for the tarnished one, then they would be happy and I would to.

If this was the ONLY possible 1916 dime I could get my hands on for my personal collection, then I would very slowly, in small incremental steps and precise positioning/application, subject only the tarnished areas to very dilute dipping solution (likely with a non-saturated Q-tip). I don't want to come back later and find a black coin.

That's just me.

Simple things to know: Silver coins, when exposed to everyday sulphides in the environment, will invariably turn black. And the thing is, toning and "original surfaces" can be applied that fools the best of 'em, even BU...

This hurts to see . What a waste of a hobbyist. Shake my head

For instance: the place where I worked had rolls upon rolls of ASEs around the safe, Most were stacked, and opened at the top. I finally figured that it was the disintegrating foam rubber of the undercarpet making the top coins of the opened rolls every color of the rainbow, and then some. Those with the tops secured suffered no toning

@slerk
Definitions are the key to understanding this.
For the coin hobby, "cleaning" means removing any original surface metal. A cleaned coin has had surface removed and has an obvious non-mint-original shine to it (as well as micro-scratches if polishing was done.

Since people who do not know any better thing "shiny" means a coin is in great shape and therefore worth a lot of money, they polish, scrub, etc. coins surfaces to make then shiny. This is "cleaning" the coin. And people in the hobby are, therefore, always told to NEVER clean a coin b/c most people do not understand what is meant and will ruin the coin.

If you spilled Pepsi onto a coin in your collection, would you leave the Pepsi there forever? Or would you run the coin under water b/c you know the water would remove the Pepsi and not change the coin in any way? BTW, distilled water is much better as there will be no mineral in it.

The above is a description of "conservation:" Removing surface contaminants without altering the original metal.

Dipping is yet another term. Dipping is putting a coin into an acid or base (EZ-EST and MS70 respectively I think - correction desired if wrong) to actually remove a microscopic layer of the metal. The level of removal is so very tiny that if, done correctly, the coin has a natural enough look to it (debatable) that coin grading companies will not label them as having been "cleaned." in fact I question whether or not some notice it at all.

Just like grading itself, Mr. Joe Averagecollector can learn how to conserve a coin and make it nigh impossible to tell anything has been done to it. There is no magic the companies use.

So conserving such that no damage is done to the coin is possible with enough practice and direct hands-on experimentation (with melt-value silver). it is crucial to find out how long to expose the metal to the chemical before the chemicals make the surfaces look unnatural (Its not long without dilution!).