Cleaned XF-Au Coins Sold As "Premium Quality Bu"?

I won't comment on those specific sellers since I have never dealt with them, but I have noticed that once you get below the top tier of highly-regarded sellers, the quality of coins goes down as the advertising budget increases.

What coins were you thinking of buying?

Lately cleaned coins are becoming a big thing. The Mints attempt to increase coin collectors is working. Many, many people that know nothing about coins are becoming collectors. They like nice shinny, pretty coins so dealers give them what they want. This is only a step back in time. Long, long time ago dealers cleaned coins to sell better since no one collected old dirty things. I remember when I was a kid and my penny book was full of circulated coins. Everyone told me to clean those dirty things. The dealers mentioned here are only a drop in the bucket so to speak with cleaned coins. Examples are everywhere. At one very popular coin dealer in Chicago their window is breaming with cleaned coins and they sell. So which is better for a dealer. Sitting on a pile of coins that are valuabale but don't sell or cleaning them and selling them like crazy?

I deal with coast to coast and they tell U if before you buy the coins if its been cleaned or not the others list dont!

I agree that these and many other sellers offer coins with cleaning and other problems. I'm sure they also sell some decent coins (maybe by accident?). I wouldn't rule out buying from them, but only if I fully understand their return policy and am willing to accept its terms in the event that I want to return a purchase.

I am always curious to see how each person interpret/define "clean/dip/polish" and the like terms. What's your?

The coin dealer near my house turn his eyebrows when I asked him about cleaning coin when I looked at his coin (I assume that he thought I was implying any of his coins was cleaned). He told me that cleaned coin are coin that was cleaned, using abrasive method and/or abrasive material to make the coin more shiny/eye appealing. He went on and said that if you apply Acetone, water, olive oil, or one of the liquid material that he sold (using for copper coins) and use a "cubetip" or a toothpick get the dirt off the coins - then that's "restorative practice" and not "cleaning".

At what level should a coin be called "dipped, re-engraved, whizzed, and cleaned" vs. something that's considered "restored coin" or similar term or genius coin?

I hope this isn't too off topic, since we are talking about coin dealers and cleaned coins.

I will second what biokemist said, if the metal hasn't been disturbed it isn't cleaned but conserved. Dipping correctly to me is perfectly acceptable (others feel entirely different and thats ok) since I am not big into toned coins. Not very long ago you couldn't give away a toned coin and just about every dealer around dipped their inventory so they would sell, and like I said if done correctly it can make the coin look 100% better to me. Dipping, if done incorrectly can ruin a coin though and can be considered harshly cleaned even though it doesn't show cleaning lines. As I said above others feel very strongly against dipping using anything including acetone (which doesn't harm any metals at all) but thats what makes collecting what you like more fun, not just collecting what everyone else thinks is alright to collect

Unfortunatly, Coin World and Nemis News care nothing about the advertisers like these, they pay for big huge ads week after week, and thats it, it's the $$$$, very like ebay who cares not for us, but for the bottom dollar.