Cleaned Coins In The Real World.

Everything about coin collecting, or collecting anything for that matter, is what you prefer. Some people like their coins blast-white, some people like theirs toned. Many collectors prefer US Classic coins, I prefer World Moderns. If you can pay $5 for a coin that you think will bring you more than $5 of satisfaction, then, by all means, buy it.

Bob's right. Personal choices. Some folks would rather have a nearly complete album, than look at holes. Many subscribe to the belief that they will upgrade later.
That brings me to a second topic. Although, you did not ask, you may want to think about selling. Some here never sell, and consider it sin to even consider. Again personal choices. For me, I'll sell duplicates to buy coins I don't have.
If you have the inclination, I would recommend selling. For the purpose of learning. Pick up a few that you don't really want to keep, but think you can make a little money by selling. Not only is that a valuable lesson, but it will make you a much smarter buyer.
I know you didn't ask, and I hope others will add their opinions. Good Luck

I don't think buying a cleaned coin is a personal choice. I think it is a choice forced on to many collectors by availability and budget constraints. If I said here is a thousand dollars, you can buy a original surface 1909S VDB LWC or a cleaned 1909S VDB and a cleaned 1914D LWC. I would bet that the majority of the people would go for the uncleaned coin.

I think that cleaning coins has always been taboo among collectors, never an accepted practice. With the advent of the internet, mass media and targeted sites such as CCF, new and newer collectors just assume that this information has always been out there and widespread and that people/collectors just chose to ignore it and clean their coins anyway.
The reason there are so many cleaned coins is that people just didn't know any better. Unless you made a concerted effort to buy books or go to the library to really study up and really dive head long into being a serious collector, the common/beginning collector just didn't know any better.

When I was a kid, it was not uncommon to find Franklin halves, Walkers, SLQs, IHCs,and the odd Peace dollar and sometimes even Morgans in every day change. Many of these were circulated and dirty. I was a collector and loved to grab these coins out of Dad's change and run to the dining room were Mom kept the silver polish with her silver plates and silverware. Boy those coins looked brand spanking new after a good wiping with the silver polish. My collecting shelf in my room sparkled with new looking coins. It wasn't until I went for my Boy Scout coin collecting merit badge did I come to know what a NO-NO it was to clean your coins. And there were millions just like me. This is why there are so many cleaned coins around.

I have no problem buying a cleaned coin to fill a hole, but always for a "defective coin" price and always with the self-acknowledgement that I will be upgrading this slot in my collection when the budget allows. To me cleaned coin are a necessity sometimes, not a choice. No first class collection has cleaned coins in it . IMHO

and this also applies to damaged coins as well.

denco7 Thanks for sharing your story. It never occured to me that youngsters were cleaning coins to make them shiny.

Anyway. to reply to the question in the original post: I would say that YES it matters. It definitely affects the value of the coin. What matters more is whether or not a buyer was aware at the time of purchase.

Also, Hotels used to buff and steam coins over night so they could hand back shiny coins to their customers. I also know little old ladies used to shine cents and nickels to give a "shiny new" coin to kids.

If 99% of the people carnold744 is showing his collection to can't tell the difference, I would have to say they aren't coin people. Starting out I couldn't tell the difference, but after a few weeks it became pretty clear what a cleaned coin looked like. After you handle enough of them I think it becomes second nature (if you are an observant person).

That being said, I do have some cleaned world coins in my collection. Some of them are older German states coins, others are more modern. A couple of medieval or ancient coins, that I assume were cleaned by the person who found them.

What I do not have in my collection are harshly cleaned coins. Coins that have their patina stripped way, coins that look like they have been chromed, coins with all the hairline scratches. Those are damaged coins as far as I am concerned.

And to your question, if the coin is never likely to be worth more than $50 dollars, or it is a common coin, then why not just wait for a non-cleaned example to show up? We have the benefit of the internet these days, wait a week or a month and there will more more examples of the coin you are looking for up for auction again.

Three points to make here:

1) Cleaning that damages an undamaged surface is obviously bad (lightly bad to harshly bad).

2) Some coins must be cleaned because not doing so will allow contaminates to damage the surface (eg PVC residue)

3) Some coins can be carefully cleaned (ie conserved) without damaging the surface.

So, tkbslc, what type of cleaning are you talking about?




Why not build a small collection of only quality coins? I wish someone had asked me this question when I started my collection but I foolishly started with quantity over quality. I think it was because I did not realize how much I would love what I was getting into or how much I would end up investing. It sounds like you might be able to learn from others' mistakes.
~jack

Collect what you like. I have several cleaned coins in my collection.

I think this coin has an old cleaning but I find it quite collectable.