/biz/ - Business & Finance

question for autists: how do you guys feel about cleaned coins?

I'm looking at buying pic related (cleaned) for a decent discount ($80 off AU grade, $40 off XF). my main worry isn't the cleaning itself, but that the receipt will show that it's cleaned.

I never understood the autism around cleaned coins and why it "curses" a coin. because the practice was so popular in the past, I simply assume that any coin held by american hands from about 1930 to 1960 has been cleaned at least once.

researching the subject is always a deep dive down the rabbit hole of retard-level autism that coinsmen can display. these people know very little about metallurgy and oxidation and are usually just pretentious consoomers.

PCGS themselves say that it's very difficult to detect skilled cleaning, such as gentle polishing with a soft cloth, ultrasonic distilled water baths, olive oil soaks, etc. obviously if someone took a wire brush to it, the coin should be rejected as being cleaned unskilled.

it makes me wonder how much of a meme coin grading is in general. if you're gonna view the coin under a stereo microscope, tiny scratches are to be expected in any old coin, cleaned or not.

related: artificial patinas. I've personally done this to great effect by placing coins on a bed of ash in the corner of the fireplace, rinsing them in water after a fire. much better and less dangerous than any kind of acetic acid vapor bath.

the reason for doing so was that I accidentally polished a bronze medal once when I was a stacklet, realized my mistake, and within 1 week had a perfect patina that was completely undetectable unless perhaps by PhD-level organic chemistry assays.