What is meant by the term smoothing?

MrBreeze

I sent this 8 Reale piece in and it was given a genuine details grade with the specific problem of "smoothed." What is the specific process of smoothing?



1764 8 Reales



Edit to fix the link.

JCMhouston

The cert just shows damage or tooling. Assuming they told you specifically that it was smoothing this is often done in the fields to try to cover up a gouge or other damage such as graffitti. They use something metal, maybe a spoon?, and tap it to smooth out the metal around the damaged area.

It's really hard to tell anything from a photo but I would look between the 4 and the 6, just left of the M, and just to the right of the crown on the obverse and see what those areas look like in hand. It's really hard to tell with a good smoothing job.

Sapyx

Smoothing can also be done to remove evidence of corrosion from the fields of a coin. In this respect it is all too frequently employed on large ancient bronze coins. Can't say I've ever heard of a modern silver coin being smoothed, but maybe it was a sea-salvaged or metal detecting find that the finder thought they would "improve".

In terms of numismatic ethics, smoothing is considered a mid-range "crime" - it's not as bad as counterfeiting, tooling, or altering the date or mintmark, but it's worse than cleaning and artificial toning.