1850 $20 Double Eagle - A Vivid, Cautionary Tale About Coin "Improvement"

Big time ouch! Cannot believe he ignored the dealer's advice.

Is this very common with many collectors? Or just few?

I have heard of this before. Not with respect to cleaning but someone who , against the dealer's advice, bought a lot of the gold when the Bank of Canada got rid of the last of their gold reserves. The coins were over-graded and consequently over-priced.

It was not as bad a financial bath as this person, but this is what can happen when ego gets in the way.

I've seen this sort of "collector" problem happen with antique firearms, too. If you don't know what you're doing, don't spend $2,000+ on a late 19th century rifle with its original finishes and patina, beautifully damascened and engraved, and then try to "clean" it yourself with a box of Brillo pads, spray cleaners and Comet, then use your $19 outdoor store rifle cleaning kit to jam your incorrectly sized bore brushes and a large metal rod down the barrel repeatedly. They permanently stripped all the patina, ruined the finish and the damascene on the barrel and receiver, stained the butt stock, and damaged the barrel rifling beyond any reasonable repair short of a rebarreling with vintage parts or a custom job; or a cut rifling rebore which would have necessitated a lot of additional (and expensive) modifications by a skilled gunsmith and further ruined any remaining value at the same time.

There's a local coin shop that I bought quite a few coins from, but they mostly dealt in gold and silver bullion. A guy was in there buying a couple rolls of pre-21 circulated Morgans for stacking and was asking about cleaning them to get the dirt off , and I straight up heard the owner telling the guy to polish them up with silver cream or tarn-x! I was shocked but not everyone treats coins as numismatic collectibles instead of junk silver.

I recall a post in a thread from a few years ago where someone posted a picture of a gold coin - perhaps in the Smithsonian? - that had been "cleaned". Looked like it had been scrubbed with Brillo. Unfortunately I can't find it with a CCF search.

@Hondo Boguss the Smithsonian has an 1849 $20 double eagle. There are only 2 known. One in the Smithsonian and the other has never been seen. It was discussed here:

http://goccf.com/t/430502
in page 2. It does look cleaned with steel wool and we suspect that the curators of the museum tried to clean or "conserve" the coin in the past.

https://www.si.edu/object/20-dollar...nmah_1078282

Wow is all I can say. $102K to $10K because of ignorance.

But it is shiny and sparkly
$102,000 mirror

It's unfortunate but important to remember that a reason a lot of our coins are so rare is that, over time, the populations of old coins are destroyed through cleaning, melting, environmental damage, being stolen or misplaced, etc... There was a time when you could get an 1893-S Morgan in BU for face value from a bank.