dougsmit I totally agree with you. Unfortunately my brother's zeal to see what was under there contributed to the harsh cleaning. And he bought them for me for Christmas and thought he was doing me a favor. We've talked about that since. The two slashes were on the coin prior to cleaning so not much you could do there. I don't own a gun brass cleaning machine and he's about a hundred miles from me so I won't tempted to go there again.:) Thank you for your advise, it is well taken.