Forcing wear on a cleaned coin to give it a natural look again?

kranky

Anyone ever experimented with that? hamiltonjh's thread showing a cleaned AU Morgan got me thinking about it. How much "wear" would you have to apply to a circ cleaned coin in order for it to recover a natural look? It would seem to me that using a circ cleaned coin as a pocket piece would remove the cleaned look eventually. The question is: would that occur before the coin dropped enough in grade to foil that strategy?

Cleaned coins just look so bad, it would seem better to have a natural-looking coin a couple points lower.

Russ

I thought about doing that with an AU 1895-O Morgan I had that was bagged for cleaning by NGC. I figured it probably would have been at EF before it was acceptable, so I sold it as a cleaned coin. It brought EF money.

Russ, NCNE

topstuf

Bleach can darken silver that has been cleaned.

......SOMETIMES.........

dorkkarl

bleach is a waayyy old-fashioned cheap-trick way of trying to darken a coin, & seldom fools anyone. to answer the original coin, there are coin doctors who can definitely artificially wear a cleaned coin to where it basically is orignal coin, but yes it does lower the technical grade.

K S

mgoodm3

My pocket piece is pretty heavily cleaned and shined. I'll post periodic images to show how it wears over time. I think it will be a slow process.

cladking

It depends on the coin, the nature of the cleaning, and the price structure. Generally there
will be very little actual wear necessary to hide a cleaning. Indeed, with copper coins that
have been lightly cleaned they can be restored simply by exposing them to the atmosphere
for a while. Set them on a furnace during the heating season and they can be "natural" in
only a few weeks. More heavily cleaned coins will require much more wear. In fact polished
coins may need to lose two full grades to at most F to hide the damage.

Usually half a grade will be more than sufficient to hide cleanings but much depends on how
much metal was moved or removed in the recesses of the design. Once the low points are
affected it will require a lot of wear from the high points to make everything match.

sliderider

Better to put the cleaned coin in an ANACS slab with a NET grade.

dorkkarl

i don't want to get into details, but the coin doctor i know can make coins look totally convincingly original, & i do mean TOTALLY.

& yes, the do get slabed. easily!

K S

ArgentumRex

How would one go about doing this? Just carry the coin around with one's change?

And how long would a coin have to be handled in this fashion in order to cause this degree of wear, say a grade? Two grades?


It sounds like it might be fun to try with a cheap coin. (Yes, I know I need to get out more)



First post, by the way!

kranky

I'm sure there are doctors who can do it, but what about just regular wear? Would the grade be affected?

sliderider

If you're going to wear the coin down to the point where you lose 2 or more grades, I still think slabbing in an ANACS holder with a NET grade is better.

mgoodm3

<< <i>How would one go about doing this? Just carry the coin around with one's change?

And how long would a coin have to be handled in this fashion in order to cause this degree of wear, say a grade? Two grades?


It sounds like it might be fun to try with a cheap coin. (Yes, I know I need to get out more) >>





It's a slow process. Give a pretty good feeling for just how long really worn coins were out there in circ.

topstuf

Well all I can say is the "seldom fooled" bleach experts are some pretty big names in the biz now.

cladking

<< <i>How would one go about doing this? Just carry the coin around with one's change?

And how long would a coin have to be handled in this fashion in order to cause this degree of wear, say a grade? Two grades?


It sounds like it might be fun to try with a cheap coin. (Yes, I know I need to get out more)



First post, by the way!



>>



Welcome aboard SilverKing. Great name.

There are various ways to do it and it depends on how active you are. A coin in the
pocket of someone doing heavy work can wear from XF to VF in a single day. Most
people will need a few weeks of normal activity to duplicate this. It is usually best to
carry similar coins and of similar size for this purpose.

There are several ways to speed the process up by lowering the rims or doing the
coarse wear early and then polishing it up as a pocket piece.

Remember that coins can be naturally polished in circulation so there's really not nec-
essarily anything unnatural about duplicating it to make a coin look better.

topstuf

The absolute BEST toned coins I ever saw were the pocket change of a crop duster.

Gorgeous.

Course, this was back in the 70's when they probly dint hafta wash their hands or nuttin