Ridiculously Cleaned Coins . Thoughts And Opinions.

I respectfully beg to differ.,
I was taught, no, I had it burned into my head many many decades ago, that to clean a coin beyond just rinsing with water was profoundly wrong. Any alteration of the coins surface is tampering, if not out and out fraud in some cases. I still believe it so.
Whereas today, cleaning, dipping and even toning with a torch is acceptable.
Don't believe me, check these out on epay.... canyoncity coins.......funny how they all have the same color. Some even have major grading company approval? Go figure.

On the subject of "acceptable cleaning", there are of course times when cleaning a coin is necessary. A coin with active corrosion must be treated, lest the corrosion continue to spread and eventually destroy the coin completely (silver doesn't tend to form such corrosion, so the coins pictured in this thread are exempt from this excuse). And a coin found by metal detecting is likely going to need cleaning beyond mere "rinsing with water", especially if it has been in the ground (or even worse, the ocean) for hundreds of years or more.

Such coins will be considered "cleaned", and nothing can change that, though age and certain artificial treatments can try to hide it. But from the point of view of a seller or future owner of such a coin, it's a case of "a cleaned coin is better than no coin at all".

You and I see "beautiful toning". A non-coin-collector sees "ugly tarnish".

The "worst" people for doing this are those who have some experience with silverware or other such metal items. People polish their silver spoons, dishes, etc all the time, and polished antique items are likely to fetch higher prices when sold. Such people are conditioned to think "tarnish is bad", and removing tarnish is value-adding.

I can only speak about the coins I encounter in Rome. I asked a dealer why so many coins are so polished in Italy. He explained it very simply . . . 'people here think silver gets polished.' All silver.

There is also a bit of a premium here on polished coins that don't look terrible (ie all the coins I pictured in this thread). A badly tarnished coin is valued less or at least equal to a polished coin - unless, of course, it's painfully shiny!

This is not so much the case at the higher end numismatic shops I have visited in Rome, but certainly seems the case in other retail settings.

In one of the topics on the fourth forum, the topic of cleaning coins has already been raised. There we found out that there are some features of coin collecting in the USA and Europe (alas, we have few participants from Asia and we know little from there). So I think there is also an em "mentality" here?¿

Kind of makes uncleaned coins worth more.

Its just sad when coins are cleaned. It is almost impossible(if not impossible) to reverse the damage.