Polished Morgans...

edsiajb

A current thread that I replied to reminded me of this:

I recently saw some Morgan dollars at a local event that appeared to be (very) polished. I asked the elderly seller and he proudly said "I tumble them in a rock tumbler with crushed corn cobs"! He obviously wasn't trying to scam anyone...just thought he was doing the right thing. He even told me that each coin takes several days to polish in the tumbler.

When I first looked at them, I tried to figure out how they had been polished but there was no evidence of buffing or any marks that I could see.

I have seen Morgans on eBay that look very similar. Is this a common method of coin doctors?

numonebuyer

I am so glad that people take it upon themselves to destroy coins that have been around for over one hundred years. Why can't they pick up a book or talk to someone that has anything to do with coin collecting?

It is so sad.

ddink

numone: some people like them that way. Granted, he probably didn't know what the crap he was doing, but if you knowingly destroy the numismatic value of a coin to appeal to a different sense of beauty, I don't see the problem. For example, people that destroy the numismatic value of coins but increase the perceived beauty (perceived, that is, by a different market) by making jewelry out of them. I think coin jewelry is ugly and a waste, but some people will pay way more than what the coin is worth, simply to see it set in a "beautiful" piece of jewelry.

Interesting, the burnishing with corncobs sounds EXACTLY like what the US MINT themselves did with the Goodacre presentation pieces