Cleaning coins, but good to know. FYI

[Dozer D]

The other day I had some bad looking "junk silver" bent, nicked, scratched, that I wanted to try cleaning. I usually use DAWN liquid soap for any cleaning, but this time I wanted to try LYSOL - Toilet Bowl cleaner, put a few coins in Rx bottle with enough Lysol & hot water to cover the coins. The Lysol DIDN'T clean the coins, but the opposite effect happened. The coins lost their silver tone, and became very dark GRAY in color ( very similar to a War nickel, or a very old Merc dime ). This definitely does not make the coin look CLEANED, but much older as if found MD. Good to know so as others DONT TRY THIS, unless you want to make the coin toned old & gray.

 

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[No gold in NY]

I HAVE BEEN WARNED. For my junk coins I use laundry detergent and crushed quartz. Most come clean, but there the stubborn ones, They are dark greenish brown and refuse to clean. I put them in the tumbler with the stones and lime away. Amazingly they came out clean, put a pinkish tone. I didn't like that. Put them in with plain water and the stones. Don't ask me how, but they came out shiny gold color. Just like the gold dollar coins. They were not perfect. Some more gold on one side than the other, and some kind of streaked gold staining I took some to my teller. She said "they look like money to me".

 

[ben ohio]

years ago i found 2 v nickles .they were on top of each other so inside was great but outside was like dug nickles you know what i mean.later on i started carrying them in my pocket for good luck with a 1920 nickel long story short they ended up like normal coins then of course over the years i lost them again.

 

[LooseChange]

Silver tarnish is silver sulfide (predominantly black or dark brown). The toilet bowl cleaner is likely a mix of HCl and Sodium-something-Sulfate. It is the -Sulfate part of the mix that delivers the Sulfur to accelerate tarnishing.

Put a silver coin in a baggie with a boiled egg and you'll get the same effect - just not so dramatic. It's all about the sulfur.

 

[xr7ator]

Oxyclean will remove that grey dark color right off of them.

 

[Dozer D]

Oxyclean will remove that grey dark color right off of them.

I'll try that on a few. Think my wife has some oxy in the laundry room. If I do, I'll repost my results. TKS.