hydrogen peroxide wash

[oldschool]

hi everbody,
went out to a old homesite thats a disked field now that MIDAN and I have hunted a couple times before.In around a hour I found two indian heads(1875-1881) and was feeling pretty good got home cleaned them up some and put them in hot pydrogen peroxide to clean them more and when I took them out I was suprise to see that I cant even see the date on the 1875 now,it pitted it so bad its worthless now.
So if others do the h-p wash be carefully!!

[fistfulladirt]

Yep, once you pull 'em outa the ground, sometimes that's the best they be. Soon as they hit the air the decomposition sets in. I only use hot hy-per on the really corroded ones, just to make out some detail. It will also darken the coin, lots of times I will only swab room temp peroxide w/q-tip, to lightly clean the surface.

[Zofchak]

How long and how exactly did you go about soaking them? I have cleaned quite a few Indians and other cents in hot peroxide, and have had excellent luck.

If the coin itself is severely corroded sometimes the crud is basically just holding a casting of the details that used to be on the coin. That's why I try to only use peroxide when I can tell a coin has a good solid base, just a lot of organic crud built up on top of it.