Luster vs Cleaned

How can you tell if a coin has true Luster or has simply been cleaned? I have read that a Luster "dances over the coin when it is turned" and that a cleaned coin is "just shiny". I have some awesome looking coins in my collection, but I am now wondering if I have been duped with a cleaned coin.

Does anyone have any pictures that may better illustrate how this "Luster vs Cleaned" looks?

Quote: "Kipsley"​How can you tell if a coin has true Luster or has simply been cleaned? I have read that a Luster "dances over the coin when it is turned" and that a cleaned coin is "just shiny". I have some awesome looking coins in my collection, but I am now wondering if I have been duped with a cleaned coin.
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​ Does anyone have any pictures that may better illustrate how this "Luster vs Cleaned" looks?

​What you're referring to is termed a "cartwheel effect". It's difficult, at least for me, to capture it on camera but I've seen YouTube videos which show the effect adequately. It's really only a thing for silver and silver colored coins and it vanishes very quickly as coins circulate. Brand new copper or bronze does have it's own kind of lustre and your "dancing sparkle" is a perfect way to describe it.

Several years ago I spent a much time and a little money putting together a lot of coins with what I considered to be altered surfaces, along with certified "body bagged" coins to compare my findings against and test my beliefs. I typed up copious notes of the results but lost them in a hard drive crash. Lesson learned!

To summarize from memory, I found that the TPG companies had far stricter standards over what constitutes a "cleaned coin" than most collectors, including myself. It was also my belief that the willingness to body bag a coin as cleaned showed a marked increase over a period of time during which they were otherwise relaxing standards across the board (this is how people are making scandalous amounts of cash buying older slabs and resubmitting them to get the "new" grade). Strange eh? I wrote what I thought was an original and elegant conclusion - that the harsher standards neatly coincided with the TPGs introducing their coin restoration services, AKA coin cleaning. "Pay us to do the cleaning or get a "details" grade." You may notice I'm not a big fan of either their business practices or product.

Far more interesting though was what I was able to learn about recoloured coins. At first glance these really do look like exceptionally well preserved coins. Especially coppers. There are products available specifically to do this to partially return cleaned coins to an acceptable state. Or you could go "old school" and blow cigar smoke at it! While it pains me to admit it, the TPG pirates really know their stuff. I guess you could look under a microscope for those tiny hairlines left by the original cleaning but that's not really an option at a crowded coin fair. The best advice I could offer is to avoid coins where the color is just too dull and uniform. The color never quite matches that of an original coin so if it's a series you are familiar with you should be able to pick out the problem coins.

I find it useful to split cleaned coins into three categories: cleaned, whizzed and polished. A polished coin looks like a coat button and is so easy to spot that nothing more needs to be said other than the damage is permanent.

A lightly cleaned coin is another matter. I'm firmly of the belief that we collectors worry far too much about it. The vast majority of 100 year old coins have been cleaned at least once during their lifetime as collectables. I have them in my collection, as do you and 99% of everyone else reading this. If the coin is otherwise undamaged it will eventually retone. There are several ways to hasten this process, without resorting to commercial recoloring products. The best known methods are "toning albums" or simply creating a micro climate favorable to the natural process. Older coin albums were made from a very different pulp than modern offerings and produce what's called cabinet tone or album tone. This type of toning is seen as acceptable to most collectors and dealers. I buy up older albums or more accurately, folders, whenever I get the opportunity for just this reason. It does however take a very long time. So, many collectors try to move things along. There are as many methods as there are collectors. I live in Florida and the moist sea breeze and hot sun are very beneficial so there's not much point in sharing the precise methods I use. Suffice to say that a strip of lightly oiled brown paper placed on a sunny windowsill works wonders for old copper.

A whizzed coin is slightly more sinister. If done badly the coins surface is horribly scored and it's basically scrap metal. The right tools though in the hands of a skilled "coin doctor" can produce a coin which will fool even experienced collectors. There's no real way to undo the damage some Dremel wielding optimist has inflicted, the best you can hope for is that retoning will hide the worst of it. If you'd like to know more about whizzed coins and what to look for please refer to the topic below in which it's explained in some detail.

https://en.numista.com/forum/topic42595.html

Ignore the earlier part of the exchange, the young man in question has since bloomed as a fine collector and a respected referee.

I feel you angst Kipsley.

After 3 years of fairly intense collecting, I am decent at recognizing harshly / spot cleaned coins. But, my interests lie mostly in copper/bronze coins and "the verdigris" is damn easy to spot (along with the inherent pitting).

Knowing your interest in Nazi Germany era coins, that's going to cover many different compositions. I wouldn't even hazard a guess on zinc coins.

Here's hoping some other knowledgeable members (see previous post) can help us both.

PS. Search our Free Discussion Forum to see our own Master at verdigris removal, Fluke.

You guys can actually be quite scary with the stuff you know. Very very helpful, but scary.

Happy to oblige my dear Peter. (I haven't forgotten about the Canadian cents incidentally, I'll move things along perhaps next week)

Zinc is more typically oiled than cleaned, and that's not entirely a bad thing if done right. It preserves from further corrosion and brings out the details. If however you are lucky enough to find a genuinely uncirculated 3rd Reich zinc, don't do it! It's fine on faded, crusty F-VF "A" mintmarks but really, you won't improve it and you're much more likely to impair it. The best thing to do with mint state 3rd Reich zincs is to open up a swap with Phil Nightingale and get some nice silver coins in trade. As you may have guessed these coins are common as dirt but they have a genuine grade rarity.

The most common way to tamper with a venerable old Reichpfennig is by dipping in vinegar or sanding it with an extremely fine grade paper. Old zinc coins should be almost black after so many years of exposure to contaminants and even just the air. The problem is that it makes the details very hard to see, especially once they make it into your album and get further obscured by the two layers of pvc on the flip and the album page.

These dipped / sanded coins are real easy to spot, they have a nice light grey color and actually look much better than the overly dark originals. It's one of those very rare instances where a coin may be improved by tampering with it. It takes a pretty dedicated collector to appreciate those small dark originals when the altered versions look so much better. Let's face it, 99% of 3rd Reich minors are among the most common coins to be found. It would be a very harsh criticism to say you are destroying future treasures. If you just have to do it then dipping is preferable, even the finest grade of sandpaper ruins the surface. Please don't do it to any of those few genuine rarities if you are lucky enough to find one though.

I've taken the decision to go with originals only but it wasn't an easy one. I've substantially completed the 1, 5, and 10 Reichpfennig zincs long ago, even many of the key dates / mints. The end result was far from satisfying so I culled all the light greys and anything with corrosion and started over. Again the result isn't what I wanted so I'm giving it another try. I'm gradually replacing all the coins F / VF with EF minimum. It's going to be a long haul, and out of an almost complete collection there are only around a dozen coins that I'm happy to keep, everything else is just a space filler.

It's pretty frustrating rejecting 99 coins out of 100 but at least they're easy to move along, being in huge demand even by non collectors. Every time I get more than a handful I auction them on Listia for absolutely crazy prices or occasionally to Numista members for much less. I've currently got a lot of 40+ which will bring enough to get a couple of genuine top tier coins. There's something about swastikas that starts a bidding frenzy, meanwhile really high value coins are slipping by for next to nothing. Anyone interested in large lots of 3rd Reich minors or wanting more information about trading coins on Listia is welcome to message me.

If you've resisted the siren calls of pretty modern proofs in favor of these humble but far more significant offerings, congratulations. You are a collector of the first order and I'm happy to call you brother, or sister.

No one cleans coins but everone knows a thousand ways.....???

Quote: "PhilipBe"​No one cleans coins but everone knows a thousand ways.....???

I can drive anything from a scooter to an 18 wheel big rig but I don't drive drunk. What's your point?

Being able to spot a hokey coin is a quite valuable skill, it doesn't have any sinister implications. Ignorance might be blissful but it sure can be expensive.

Ok. So I can be assured I have this right, the following zinc coin should not look like this?

Yes ma'am, you are correct. You can even make out where the coin was held when it was dipped. In it's natural state it would typically be far darker. It's hard to explain, they do come in all shades ranging from mid grey to almost black but generally speaking, the lighter the tone the more likely the tampering. You will very occasionally find a higher grade coin which for reasons unknown has kept it's original light grey colour but these are not common and in every single case that I've seen they are marred by ugly blemishes. If that same coin had been allowed to tone the blemishes would vanish, that's why I'm seeking out those types.

I'm sure that perfect specimens exist but at this late stage in the game I don't think it would be possible, even with an unlimited budget to put together a complete collection of pristine "as struck" coins. If anyone has done so I'd sure like to hear about it. Mainly for that reason, but also because I like uniformity, I'm excluding all the lighter toned coins, altered or otherwise, from my collection.

Please don't go and shoot your local coin dealer in the face because some bloke on the internet said the coin he sold you was a bit sketchy. Coins like this are surprisingly common, I suspect they are the often result of bulk sellers trying to "improve" their stock but of course I can't prove that. I'm generally on the purist side of the fence but I don't really see these coins as ruined in the same way that I would if it was copper for example. I'd put them in the same category as dipped silver, not really my thing but perfectly acceptable to most.

I've just fact checked my assumptions by going through the lot of coins I'm getting ready to sell off when time permits. Out of 44 coins there are four which are light grey toned. Of those four one is clearly bleached, one is definitely original and the other two are borderline. I'm not sure if we can draw any valid conclusions from this as I'd normally pass on an altered coin but I reckon it's safe to say that somewhere upwards of 10% of the current population is altered in some way. I'll try to get some daylight photos when time permits, perhaps next week, which might make things a bit clearer.

There is another side to "coin cleaning" that most people do not mention. In the Victorian era, women in the eastern U. S. and other areas wore long white gloves, and tarnished silver coins would discolor those gloves. Many hotels routinely cleaned all their change, so it would not soil the ladies' gloves.

If you find high grade silver coins from prior to 1900, that have NEVER been cleaned, they are quite likely black in color. Silver oxidizes/tones far too readily.

Turning to coins of the 1920s-1930s, collectors of that era often coated coins in varnish, especially if they were of an unstable metal like zinc. If you wish to remove the coating (it gets ugly, after a while), a dip in acetone will remove it, without harming the coin. (Make sure the area is well ventilated--and no fire hazards around--when you use acetone!!)