Need Help Cleaning Old Coppers

[rydiggaahh]

Hello Everyone. I was hoping some of you could share some advice on cleaning old copper coins. The only time I clean a coin is if i need to bring a date out on it. I'm feeling frustrated right now because i just destroyed a large cent that i found today using the peroxide method. The reason i chose this method was because i used it on a 1723 half penny with fair results. I've seen posts on the forums that show coins looking like they never came out of the ground using this method.

Does anyone have any advice/better techniques? (I know you should "never" clean coins but I'm more interested in what i found than the value)

 

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[VERDI-CHEMIST]

Do you have any pictures? Are these ground finds? It's impossible to recommend a technique or to predict outcomes without seeing the corrosion. But.....

Heavily corroded coins generally cannot be "saved" without a harsh cleaning. They will end-up being cleaned coins if you attempt conservation. There's hundreds of techniques that people use, almost all of them are harsh. Sorry to plug my own product, but it's really the BEST and only conservation chemical on the market today. It will not do much for heavy corrosion, other than turning it inactive (please read the documentation), but it's great on the lesser types.

http://www.wizardcoinsupply.com/verdi-care.html

 

[Iron Patch]

Sounds like the one you ruined probably had all its detail in the patina, and if you wash that away then a blank disk is expected. There's no rules to cleaning and it's all about experience deciding what coins are good candidates to be cleaned, and if so what method to use. There's just as much bad advice posted as good, so the best thing to do is post pictures, pay attention to what types of coins are being made better with cleaning, the occasional diaster that gets posted, and most importantly don't be in a rush to do anything. You could wait a year, 2 years, or even 5 years and the coin will probably be just the same. Much better to be sure than to make a bad choice on a great find. I'm probably not a person who would be described as having a ton of patience, but for cleaning finds when I started I certainly did. I did make some mistakes like everyone else, but I learned from them all and now regardless of what I dig I know in the matter of seconds what will make it the best it can be. But if I'm not 100% sure I'll take a while to decide even if it's a day or two.

 

[Rick (Nova Scotia)]

most importantly don't be in a rush to do anything. You could wait a year, 2 years, or even 5 years and the coin will probably be just the same. Much better to be sure than to make a bad choice on a great find.

Excellent advice.

If it's a 5 dollar coin in VG and you've found one worse than that, well who cares what you do to it, but something with some real value should be given more considderation

 

[BuckleBoy]

most importantly don't be in a rush to do anything. You could wait a year, 2 years, or even 5 years and the coin will probably be just the same. Much better to be sure than to make a bad choice on a great find.

Excellent advice.

If it's a 5 dollar coin in VG and you've found one worse than that, well who cares what you do to it, but something with some real value should be given more considderation

The trouble, Rick, is that many of the earlier copper coins you Have to clean in order to even know what it is. Varieties can mean everything, so in many cases it is not enough to just know the date and condition.

In other words, you can't even ID until you clean.

There are probably some $1,000 coppers sitting in some long-time diggers' junk boxes--and I mean the types of detectorists that have been digging for 40 years and don't use the internet.

 

[BuckleBoy]

There must be very few coins worth a $1000 in a condition so bad you can't even read the date on ??

Now buddy, I didn't say that. Go back and re-read what I actually said. And yes, there are coppers sitting out there worth more than that because diggers don't know what they have. Take a look at prices for some of the KG counterfeits varieties.

I have no issue with the steel wool. A coin collector might, but I don't care All I see is a bunch of common stuff there anyhow.

What I want to see more of--and this is ALL methods of cleaning--is Before as well as After photos. I have no idea how bad these were before you cleaned them.

If they were really bad, then this is a great result.

If they weren't that bad, I probably would've used other methods instead.


-Buck