Cleaning My Silver........

[Chizzy]

After weeks of research and consternation, I decided on a method for cleaning my common date silvers.

A small glass dish lined with aluminum foil (shiny side up), a bit of baking soda and pinch of salt. Add boiling water, mix the ingredients well and add the coins..........wait several minutes.........pick up coins and rub between thumb and forefinger, wipe with clean white terry cloth and set on a clean white cloth to air dry. Then give them a bath in distilled water............repeat drying process...........

I'll let everyone know how the long term (2 to 4 weeks?) process works............

 

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[Chizzy]

After a little over 2 weeks, the coins i cleaned show no evidence of being worse off........they look great................no discoloration, no return of tarnish, no coin album deterioration...........

Back in 2 more weeks............

 

[Roland58]

I tried the foil, baking soda, salt and aluminum foil on some tarnished silver coins to no avail. I think the problem was that part of the black was tar from some asphalt. I did, however, have some luck by boiling the coins in some baking soda water for about 5 minutes and the black was removed. I'm guessing the heat melted the oily tar with the dirt and tarnish.

 

[Chizzy]

Yeah......the foil method works just on the tarnish. I had to clean off the "dirt" with a little mineral spirits, then repeat the foil method.

Thanks for the boiling water idea..........let me know how they look in 2 to 4 weeks.................

 

[Chizzy]

After 5 weeks, silver still bright and the albums have no chemical bleed indications from the coins...........

 

[Roland58]

same here

After 5 weeks, silver still bright and the albums have no chemical bleed indications from the coins...........

It's been a couple of weeks on mine, or more, and everything still looks great. I put the Barber dime in a flip and no evidence of any problems even under a 40x loupe.

 

[Chizzy]

Took on the challenge of cleaning 7 Morgans that had been taped into a Whitman folder for 25+ years. Soaked them first in mineral spirits for 24 hours, then cleaned them with distilled water and dried with soft white terry cloth. Let sit for about a week to watch for any reaction/discoloration. No issues observed, so I used the foil method once again and they came out of the bath sooooooo clean. A quick rinse with distilled water once again and.........just magnificent. Took them to my LCS and was told that I may have "saved" the better condition coins from being considered "junk silver"..............I'm sold on this method.

 

[T-Bone]

Chizzy - What does LCS stand for?

 

[Chizzy]

Chizzy - What does LCS stand for?

Local Coin Shop...........
Took me a while to catch up on the abbreviations...........and welcome to the site.............