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To Clean Or Not To Clean - This Is The Question


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I like the simple pink eraser and use the sharp edge on them to get into the details. You can see the groves in the middle where I clean the edge of the coins.

 

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7 hours ago, Cabin Fever said:

I like the simple pink eraser and use the sharp edge on them to get into the details. You can see the groves in the middle where I clean the edge of the coins.

 

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I dug one of these a few weeks ago at an Elementary school...  next to a pencil (must have been the lead in the pencil that rang in at a solid 12 ? haha) .  But I had no idea I was digging a coin cleaner!  Can't wait to try it t!  Thanks for the tip Bryan.  ~Tim

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  • 2 weeks later...

     Well all this wonderful advice and a true concern for preservation of coins is starting to overwhelm me I think but I'm sticking with Ron deathray's friend. "I like them shinny".

     So I have now taken up DIY Alchemy and Metallurgy and have begun to make every penny pay for it's self by way of an auction. If you wish to purchase any of my Pirates Treasures please bid on them at Trademe NZ. The rest of some of my not so precious coins have found there way to the smelting pot and have begun a new life as ornaments. 

        I thank everyone who participated in this discussion and very much appreciated  your advice on cleaning coins. I will from now only refer to a coins in there oxidised condition as Toning thanks to Swapstomper Al. 

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       With the wealth of information that I have read here, from such knowledgeable and interested people in coin preservation. I have now invested in some new equipment mainly the Ultrasonic Cleaner. In fear of inflicting any damage to the coin and after reading what Swampstopper Al mentioned and suggested.                                          He's right, "I just can not leave those coins alone." So we've bought a couple of extra items and acquired a good camera for those close up pictures. So if strick is reading this just get yourself a used Samsung ST50 or along those lines, their quite cheap after being 15 years old now. The picture quality is great, easy to use and I think it has about 12.2 Mega Pixels.  I Also recommend a free picture viewer which allows me to crop and enlarge with very little ease, so try using Irfan I'm sure you will be impressed with it. I will leave you nice people with a few pictures of detector finds and were taken with our used Samsung ST50 cropped and enlarged with Irfan.

                                                       All the Best,

                                                                            L.L.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've found several key date silver coins over the years, and a rare gold coin, but I don't really ever plan to sell my coins I've found..

If they already have environmental damage, I try to make them "presentable".  Depending on their condition, I may do anything from a simple light baking soda rub, to Ezest.  True once you clean them you cannot go back, but on the other hand, if you never plan to sell them, and want to enjoy them, do as you please in my opinion.

The best preserved silver coin I've ever found was a 1906-S Barber dime at a park demo in San Francisco several years ago.  As soon as I popped it out of the ground, I couldn't believe how pristine it was, it looked like it was dropped the day it was minted. I did nothing but rinse it off with water to clean it. I had some free PCGS gradings and decided to send it in with some other coins for grading. Not only did it not get a cleaned or environmental damage label, it came back graded as a MS60, common date, but at that condition it's a $300 coin.  Bummer none of the key date silvers I've dug were that clean, but it is what it is.  At the end of the day, if you really think about it, the odds are so stacked against us to even find a key date coin to begin with it's staggering, add to that the likelihood of environmental damage and when you finally do find a nice one, it's like winning the lottery!

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It's interesting what motivates detectorists -- there are so many possibilities.  Like you, I get excited with the date+MM opportunities, realities, and sheer anticipation.  For me that came from being introduced to coin collecting by my family (mother and uncles) when I was 6 years old.  I never lost the thrill of the find.

6 hours ago, Cal_Cobra said:

At the end of the day, if you really think about it, the odds are so stacked against us to even find a key date coin to begin with it's staggering....

I've wondered about that myself.  However, there are some things going for us.  One is that when these coins were lost there weren't coin collectors (or at least not many) cherry picking the scarce and rare dates.  Secondly (and this is just wild speculation), when you try and answer the question "where did all the minted coins go?" the answer seems to be weighted towards 'lost'.  Thirdly, and this is where you Western US detectorists have some edge, is that coins weren't uniformly distributed after being minted.  They tend towards regional distribution.  The scarcer coins tend (but of course not always) to be from the San Francisco and Carson City mints, at least compared to Philadelphia and New Orleans.  Early Denver coins were more scarce than later when they eventually surpassed Philadelphia.  You can even go so far as to say that scarce -S and -CC issues were common in certain locales because that is where they were selectively sent and circulated.

I don't know how many Lincoln cents I've searched in my lifetime, both from pocket change and bank rolls.  WAG is over 100,000.  But the scarcest Lincoln I've (yet) found was last summer in the back yard of a house built in the 1950's -- a 1924-D.  I've found less than 200 Wheaties (less than 1000 cents total) metal detecting so far.  Yes, it could be randomness but I think it's more than that.  I know that find pales in comparison to some of yours, but be careful to look over your shoulder because I'm not giving up.  ?

Ok, enough rambling.  It's over 40 F and sunny with no wind.  There's a rare coin out there waiting for me and maybe today is my day!

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On 2/26/2019 at 10:28 AM, GB_Amateur said:

It's interesting what motivates detectorists -- there are so many possibilities.  Like you, I get excited with the date+MM opportunities, realities, and sheer anticipation.  For me that came from being introduced to coin collecting by my family (mother and uncles) when I was 6 years old.  I never lost the thrill of the find.

I've wondered about that myself.  However, there are some things going for us.  One is that when these coins were lost there weren't coin collectors (or at least not many) cherry picking the scarce and rare dates.  Secondly (and this is just wild speculation), when you try and answer the question "where did all the minted coins go?" the answer seems to be weighted towards 'lost'.  Thirdly, and this is where you Western US detectorists have some edge, is that coins weren't uniformly distributed after being minted.  They tend towards regional distribution.  The scarcer coins tend (but of course not always) to be from the San Francisco and Carson City mints, at least compared to Philadelphia and New Orleans.  Early Denver coins were more scarce than later when they eventually surpassed Philadelphia.  You can even go so far as to say that scarce -S and -CC issues were common in certain locales because that is where they were selectively sent and circulated.

 

I think you're exactly right.  I found a low mintage U.S. gold coin, PCGS reports less than 100 known to exist, but how many of those were either melted down or are 8" deep in the dirt.  Living on the left coast, I've definitely noticed that we're lucky to find a predominate amount of S minted seated and barber coins, which often have a higher value then their counterparts from other mints.  Although I've dug several 1916S Mercury dimes,  I did (finally) bag a 1916D Mercury dime in San Francisco ? 

I think CC issues are still not common anywhere.  I've dug a CC seated quarter and several seated dimes, but so far, they've all been common dates ?  My buddy dug an 1849D U.S. $5 gold coin at an old trading post site we detected.

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1 hour ago, Cal_Cobra said:

I did (finally) bag a 1916D Mercury dime in San Francisco

That's a great find!  Imagine how many bank rolls of dimes you would have had to search in the early 1960's (before silver coins were Hoovered out of circulation) to get that.

Although I'm suspicious of the low survival estimate reports by PCGS, even if they're wrong by a factor of 10 it still means they aren't in the hands of collectors and that doesn't leave many 'places' for them to be.  We know where they are globally (i.e. in the ground).

BTW, I failed to mention how impressive your MS-60 grade from PCGS for a coin that you found in the ground.  (I wouldn't get it regraded if I were you. ?)  You must have quite a collection of coins recovered to have so many rare finds.  Good stuff and I look forward to your next discovery.

 

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1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

BTW, I failed to mention how impressive your MS-60 grade from PCGS for a coin that you found in the ground.  (I wouldn't get it regraded if I were you. ?)  You must have quite a collection of coins recovered to have so many rare finds.  Good stuff and I look forward to your next discovery.

 

The next time I have the PCGS graded 1906S Barber dime out I'll post a photo of it.  It's a darn shame none of my semi/key date coins have come out like that one, but it is what it is.  I figure it was a 1906 San Francisco earthquake loss.

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I have an ultrasonic cleaner and use a cleaning solution called Yellow Magic in it. It does an ok passive job on de-crapping the finds but as with many solvents you have to be careful that they don't react with the metal your cleaning and in this case aluminum or aluminum bronze may react and degrade.

I also have a vibratory tumbler and loaded it up with extra fine walnut shell to clean my chump change I pull out of parks. It is large enough to clean more than 10lbs at a time and does a descent job. Surprisingly it didn't seem to take any detail off the coins and did take the dirt, corrosion and patina off without polishing them. I wouldn't do that on extremely rare coins simply because im chicken $@#% and don't want to destroy a good find.

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