Cleaning Wheat Pennies

[fistfulladirt]

I don't know why people keep suggesting putting coins in lemon juice or vinegar. They are acidic and will damage metal.

Olive oil is also acidic and will cause pits over time.

https://finds.org.uk/counties/merseyside/the-dangers-of-olive-oil/

 

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[brianc053]

Hi everyone, I'm coming back to this thread because I found another Indian Head penny at that farm site and I tried some techniques to clean it.

First, here's what it looked like once I gently removed the dirt with water and a "sensory brush" (like a very soft surgical scrub brush).
I was able to see the date (1897) but wanted to see if I could recover more detail.

Front and Back

Notice that there is detail around the outer edge visible.

Next I used warm peroxide, and while it bubbled it didn't really do much to remove the heavy buildup.

So - I tried electrolysis. My thinking was that the penny wasn't worth much and I wanted to see what could be done to remove the buildup on both sides.

I did two rounds of 30 minutes each and then a 3rd round of 45 minutes.
Here's what it looks like now with some oil applied (OO I can't figure out the "lightly brushing" thing, but maybe I need practice):


My thoughts: I think the penny lost a lot of detail because of the electrolysis. It's most noticeable to me along the outer edges, where I think the fine markings went away. The back seems especially damaged by the electrolysis, because now I can't see much of any detail on the back.
Yes, the electrolysis did remove most of the corrosion (I left a little on purpose, to show what it looked like before), but I think it took copper away with it.
I could argue that the ground here in New Jersey caused the majority of the corrosion, and that would be true - the penny wasn't in great condition when I found it.
But I think my pictures show that electrolysis also took away some of the detail.

I'm going to be hesitant to use electrolysis in the future.