Negative contact issues(help please!)

[shreduhsoreus]

So I got this Paragon V2 clone a little over a month ago. I loved it at first but the performance started dropping. I clean it weekly but for the past few weeks that's not helping at all. A friend of mine thinks that my negative contact might be the issue based on how it looks. I've tried cleaning it, soaked it in isopropyl alcohol, used toothpaste(I saw it suggested on a thread here lol), used both a tooth brush and cotton swabs. Whatever is on this contact won't come off, it might be damaged.

If anyone has any idea what this could be or what I could do to fix it I would appreciate it. Everything else is as clean as the day I got it, but I just can't get the same performance out of it as I used to, voltage drop seems massive because it doesn't hit very hard.

 

[Archer74]

Does it really look like something is on it or could something came off of it? It looks like scratches to me on the pic. Could it be that the conductive plating rubbed off? I looked at the specs on the mod you have and it says the pins have a silver platting on them. Maybe it came off?

 

[shreduhsoreus]

It does look like it's damaged, I just don't know how that could have happened by just using it. Does it make sense for whatever that is to be causing a loss in performance? I've tried using my fingernail to scrape whatever it is off, but it doesn't come off so it might be damaged.

If it is damaged, is there anything I can do besides finding a new negative pin to fix the issue?