Did old "rubbings" of coins damage the coins themselves?

Longacre

I was taking a look through the QDB book called "The Norweb Collection: An American Legacy". The book contained a few pages of "rubbings" of coins made by Emery May Holden. I know that this was a common practice in the past. I assume that a piece of paper was put on a coin, and a pencil or charcol was used to make the rubbing. My question is whether this did any damage to the coins? Were rubbings made of very high grade coins, such as proofs?

relayer

I can imagine some AU-58's were created using that technique

solid

It's a scary thought to be placing/moving paper, which is very abrasive,
against pristine proof surfaces!

ziggy29

It certainly could -- and, I'll bet, did to at least a few if this was the actual method.

lordmarcovan

My first thought on this question was, "how absurd- of course a rubbing couldn't affect a coin's surfaces, unless somebody forgot the paper."

But then, when you mentioned proof coins, I had to wonder...

PerryHall

I doubt that it would hurt a business strike coin but I can't imagine putting paper against the delicate surfaces of a proof and rubbing it with a pencil. Wouldn't the paper move slightly under the presure of the pencil point? Also, it was popular to put a piece of foil on a coin and to rub it producing a 3-D copy of a coin. I can't imagine this was good for a proof coin either.