Corrosion is one of the most destructive forms of damage a coin can suffer. It eats away at the surface, breaks down metal at a chemical level, and leaves behind pits, discoloration, or flaky crust that can make a coin nearly unrecognizable. Most of the time, corrosion happens when a coin is exposed to moisture,…
If you hang around coin collecting communities long enough, you’ll eventually run into a coin that looks almost too good. The shine seems unnatural. The details seem off. You flip it around in the light and feel like something’s not quite right. That’s usually when someone drops the dreaded comment: “It looks cleaned.” In this…
A details grade is assigned to a coin when a grading service determines that the coin has been altered or damaged in a way that disqualifies it from receiving a straight numerical grade. The grader still evaluates the coin’s level of wear (VF, AU, MS, etc.) but the final grade includes a note explaining the…
If you’re trying to spot cleaned coins, you’re going to run into a lot of confusing lines under the microscope. Not all of them are signs of damage. One of the most common points of confusion is the difference between hairline scratches from cleaning and die polish lines that are part of the original coin…
When a coin is polished, someone has taken it upon themselves to shine it, often with a cloth or something abrasive, to bring back that “fresh from the mint” look. Unlike whizzing, which uses high-speed tools, polishing tends to be more of a manual, low-speed process, but it’s still damaging. The results might look cleaner…
If a coin looks like it went through a belt sander, you’re probably looking at a whizzed coin. Whizzing is an aggressive and outdated attempt to make worn coins look “better” by mechanically buffing the surface, usually with a wire brush, Dremel tool, or polishing wheel. The goal is to create a fake shine, but…
There’s something strange about a coin that’s technically “clean” but doesn’t look quite right. Maybe it shines just a little too much for its age, or maybe it seems unnaturally flat. That odd look might be the result of chemical dipping, one of the most common ways a coin gets damaged without a single scratch….
Hairline scratches are one of the easiest signs of cleaning to spot, but also one of the most misunderstood. They’re usually the first thing new collectors are told to look for, yet learning to identify them accurately takes some experience. If you’ve spent any time reading Reddit threads about cleaned coins, you’ve probably seen people…