Theconsignmenthub Banned Me From Buying From Them

Cleaning: Our position is that every coin that is not housed in a sealed mint holder has been cleaned at some point in its life time.

If one takes a coin and blows a speck of dust off the surface, they just cleaned it.

If you put a coin in your pocket and walk down the street the friction of the coin in your pocket will have a cleaning effect. If one were to take the same coin and use a high speed polishing tool on the surface, they cleaned it.

EVERY COIN IS CLEANED. CLEANING, THEREFORE, IS ALWAYS A MATTER OF DEGREE.

If you send a "dirty" coin into a grading service to be "conserved" and let them do the "conserving" they will charge you for their work CLEANING the coin and then charge you for grading the coin. When they clean a coin they regard it as "conserved". If you send a grading service a coin they believe may have been cleaned by anyone else, they may call it "cleaned".

TODAY THE TOP RATED GRADING SERVICES DIP THOUSANDS OF COINS IN SOLUTIONS TO REMOVE TARNISH...THEN GIVE THEM A SOLID UNCLEANED GRADE.

Our estimate is that grading services clean over 10,000 coins each week. Some dealers literally send thousands of coins in Plastic Proof set/Mint set containers to grading services. The grading services "crack them out" and dip them to remove toning and haze. Grading services charge for their service and will grade the coins they clean with a SOLID grade without reference to having cleaned them.

"Cleaning" removes contaminants from the surface of a coin that would, over time, "eat away" at the surface. Removing contaminants from the surface of a coin, then sealing the coin in a holder to fully protect it from being mishandled or coming into contact with contaminants as subtle as air and moisture, combined with catalysts like light and heat will one day, become the approved method in the coin industry of housing/protecting a coin as it is being done today by the coin grading services.

In the present day "your coin has been cleaned" is used as an excuse by dealers to beat the seller down in price when a dealer is buying. However, "cleaning" is discounted or never mentioned when a dealer is selling a coin.

The purists want every scrap of dirt that can't be blown away with one's breath to be left on a coin so as to preserve it in it's "natural state". When you consider the ultimate/potential damage that any contaminant will do over time to a coin, it only seems logical to remove all contaminants if the goal is to preserve and protect the coin.

Ever hear of the term "Improperly cleaned" that grading services place on coins they grade? What do these two words imply?

If you can say that a coin is "improperly cleaned" then this means that a coin can be "properly cleaned". Otherwise grading services would only use the word "cleaned" when describing a coin.

Contaminants left on the surface of any coin will ultimately "mix" with the metal of the coin and cause damage. The $64,000 question is, "when to clean", "how to clean", and "when not to clean".

To say a coin "needs expert cleaning" means just that. An expert, like a grading service, needs to make the determination. Even after 55 years, we don't claim to have the expertise. We buy and sell coins.........it's not our business to clean/grade coins........we leave that to the experts...........and there are truly experts.

The advice, "never clean a coin" applies to most people........because most people would "improperly clean a coin".........but "never clean a coin" does not apply to all people and all coins at all times. Some coins should be cleaned some of the time while other coins should never be cleaned at anytime.

Finally, we want to share one experience with the question we have received about 1 million times over the years......"Has this coin been cleaned?". Our response was ?Yes, in our opinion the coin has been cleaned to some extent during its lifetime.? The customer buys the coin anyway. About two weeks later his friend writes madder than a mosquito in a mannequin factory stating that in his opinion the coin has not been cleaned and he would have been willing to pay three times what his friend paid for it but didn't buy it because we told his friend we though it had been cleaned.

You can ask us our opinion on whether or not a coin has been cleaned. Our answer will be two fold:

l 1. What percentage of 100 is it "visible" to us that the coin in its present condition has been cleaned?

l 2. What percent of 100 do we think the coin has of passing a grading service as not having been cleaned?

Opinions are like noses. Most people have one, and if you want "ours" about coin cleaning or anything else........just ask.......it's free. Dumb questions are better than stupid mistakes.

We do charge, however, for marital counseling.