Pocket Pieces For The Purpose Of "Improvement:" OK Or Not?

Totally acceptable. IMHO, of course... carrying a coin with you every day for years is a labor of love, the reward should be obvious in the value return or the dumping of a details grade.

I'm not sure I'd ever try that, but I do believe that what he is saying is true.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was found that more than half the coins out there have been cleaned somehow over their lifetime. This would include raw and slabbed coins. I don't know what chemical (acid?) is used for 'dipping', but I assume that it strips a layer of metal off of coins. I'm not sure that age will bring that layer back, but there are probably other cleaning methods that can be disguised by later wear and tear.

Thiourea, usually, and you've figured it right. Done right, an expert can't tell. Done wrong, and you have a coin with a VF30 finish and Mint State details.

The overwhelming majority of coin wear comes from rubbing against other coins; they really spend very little time being rubbed by human fingers. It stands to reason that wearing them down in one's pocket would have the same result as "normal" circulation wear.

Is the wear coming from the friction with the pocket or contact with other coins? If it is the latter then wouldn't you get the same result from throwing it in a coffee can full of change and rolling it around the floor?

I suppose that the real question is whether modern wear is the same as the wear received in a coin's original working life. Were the 19th century leather coin purses and money belts an equivalent environment to the pocket of your Gap pants? And of course, your 1878 Morgan isn't being spent, is it? It's not changing hands. We speak a lot of honest wear, but ethically speaking, how can intentional wear be "honest?"

There's a coin sitting on the velvet in front of you, under your observation light. It's a nice XF-ish Walker, whose surfaces seem quite original.

How did it come to look that way? Tell me, with absolute certainty.

You could either spend the rest of your life agonizing over whether or not somebody deliberately did something to it, or you can simply accept what you see. Reality is a point in time, a thing of zero duration. What's real right now? Does the coin look right, right now?

If a kid went swimming in the creek in 1893 wearing his pants, with a nickel in his pocket, isn't that coin cleaned?

You've all (almost certainly) handled cleaned coins. Anyone who's ever collected circulated coins has (almost certainly) handled cleaned ones. Is the cleaning deliberate if a non-numismatist does it? If it got dry-cleaned in the pocket of a suit? If it laid out on the lawn for a couple days in the rain?

What if I got a circulated '55 Double Die in change, accidentally washed it in the change pocket of my jeans and PCGS slabbed it anyway because it didn't "look" cleaned? Does the fourth owner down the road from me care, if it doesn't "look" cleaned?

Does it really matter?

Edited for comment posted while I was typing:




I would not trust any concept on which we all agree unanimously.

Now, riddle me this: Is a cleaned coin acquiring wear in the pocket of an innocent who never knew it was cleaned - owned it only as money - different from someone who did the exact same thing deliberately? Does the coin care?

Riddle me this: (hypothetical) My Dad owned a 1893 S Morgan dollar, it was the prize of his collection, he showed it off, he bragged on it , it was the culmination of his lifetime collection efforts. While he was an avid collector, he was no expert.
When he passed, I posted his coin here, and found it to be a very....very well done doctored 1893.

Do I feel horrible for my Dad ? Do I thank the person that doctored it for giving my Dad so much joy in the ownership of this coin ? Do I stop my efforts to keep counterfeiters, crack-out artists and such out of the hobby because there are thousands and thousands of people out there with coins in their collections that they have waited a lifetime to own, that will spend the rest of their lives never knowing that their coin is counterfeit, doctored, or an ungradeable crack out ?