Do You Collect Cleaned Or Damaged Coins On Purpose?

That must be a teeny, tiny hole.
Thanks for posting, didn't know there was a sub-market for this type of thing.

If you collect ancients, some degree of cleaning and/or environmental damage is to be expected. Only the tiniest percentage of such will exhibit neither.

I'll buy a holed coin if it's rare and the price is right.

I always pick up any "lowballs" I come across just because, although technically they're not damaged.

A really heavily damaged coin always perversely piques my interest, especially if otherwise it'd be desirable and expensive. As an example of this last category, check out this Fugio cent -

Bumping this thread because I was just looking through an auction list where I am confronted with this choice.

This auction contains a collection of a single denomination which I collect, minted around 1600, 141 examples. Nearly every one grades EF or higher, a little over 10% are slabbed, but well over 50% of them appear to have been cleaned (how else do you explain bright silvery surfaces on 400 year old coins?).

This is followed by a group of 47 coins from the same era, same country. Fewer are cleaned, and 65% are slabbed (including a handful of "Details/Cleaned" examples).

My experience is that with this place and era, there are far more cleaned examples available of certain types than uncleaned. I have some of each in my collection already. So, to have more choices, I'll consider ones in that first group that have probably been cleaned.