wearing a cleaned coin to "unclean" it.

tjkillian

My wife asked a question I could not answer for sure. If you have a coin (mine is a 1799 bust dollar in strong XF), that is cleaned, could you use the coin as a pocket piece and wear off the cleaning? Knowing that the coin would be lower grade, would it enhance its value or decrease its value?

Tom

dorkkarl

tom, that's an old trick - "circulate" a cleaned coin to get it back to original. i have a buddy who'll put cleaned coins in his shoes & walk around on em for weeks to fix em. don't know how he stands the pain (or the smell....) but it works. not sure if it's worth the effort though.

as for value, it depends on if you like the scent of smelly socks or not.

K S

nwcs

It would reduce the effects of the cleaning, but also reduce the grade details. That's one place where careful artificial toning can actually work. To restore a natural appearance. Of course, it is faked. But coin will probably always look like a cleaned-retoned coin to the knowledgeable eye. That's where a place like NCS can help you.

cladking

It's easily done and almost always raises the value of the coin. Unless it's harshly
cleaned it will not even need to wear down a whole grade. Less than a quarter
grade will erase any light cleaning. This can be done in bulk also. Most lightly cleaned
coins need no more than exposure to the air for some months or years. There are
lots of tricks to "redirty" coins. The discount on cleaned coins is overly great.

This cleaning and dirtying are a natural function of circulation. There are many ways
that a circulating coin can become cleaned. If left alone there will be no way to spot
it in just a few years, so this is perfectly natural.

jdimmick

I even thought about trying this with an 01-s quarter, buying a cleaned one in say xf, then wearing it down to a solid vf.(because you cant find ???)

I was not sure how the circualtion would change the fields to make them look natural, and I did not have the guts on a piece this expensive to do it.