Circulated Coin-Slabbed-Polished. What In The World?

There's a big difference between normal circulation and intentional polishing to "improve" the appearance of a coin. It's not hard to tell a true polish job versus pocket rub. The usual remedy for polishing is to make the coin a pocket piece and let that natural rub remove signs of the intentional act. Unfortunately you will lose a grade or two in the process. I advise those who can't resist trying to improve the look of a coin to do it in their pocket with a couple of bucks worth of loose change. Just don't try to sneak up on anyone.

Halfwitty,

They determine if the manipulation was intentional or a by-product of circulation. With a coin in-hand I can tell the difference between natural wear and artificial improvement 9 out of 10 times. Spit-shining is not natural wear. If it was done 100 years and put away, graders will still call it polished. It has to re-enter circulation to regain the "natural" look, i.e. removing metal and hairlines through contact with objects in your pocket.

It's a double-edged sword for coin doctors. Graders are more schooled today than in the past on techniques. If you attempt to improve a coin through cleaning/polishing, it can't be restored to a "natural and gradeable" state without imparting wear. And that will knock the grade down a notch or two.

Try to figure out how many coins have ever been made. Then assume that even 10 to 20% have been cleaned in some way in the past. And then since most are lost in the numerous ways coins vanisn or get mangled, your not really left with to many of those cleaned or polished coins. It's usually only the oned done purposely in an attempt to fool a purchaser that the coin(s) are new or newish. In many cases those are the ones that someone tries to get graded and are dismissed as polished or cleaned.
The coins that are rubbed on a pant leg, spit on to see a date better, carried to long in a pocket usually still have dirt, grime, stuff embedded in those little places like the inside of a letter. That is why those are circulated, not cleaned.
And not all claened coins can be noted as such either. Some are claened so well that they ALMOST look normal.
Now for instance the ones I clean with a wire wheel on my bench grinder do look a bit cleaned.