robfinds
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Been laid low with man flu for a couple of day's. Mr's robfinds came in this afternoon with a small ultrasonic cleaner. Apparently their on offer at Aldi for £20. She explained she'd bought it to clean her jewelry. It certainly does that, after a few minutes it came out gleaming. Of course I had to try it on some finds. Initial experiments were not good. It does remove crud, but would take forever on a copper coin (the instructions do say that you can add detergent to improve cleaning). Anyway seeing how non destructive it was, I decided to try the Henry V111 half groat I posted recently. The thing with the later coins of Henry V111 is that the silver was badly debased (giving him the nick name copper nose) more copper than silver in these coins. If you try to clean badly debased coins using electrolysis, you quickly ruin them. I put the coin in the ultrasonic cleaner for a few minutes, and then gently cleaned it with a tooth brush. The coin had in fact cleaned up a little. I started to look at examples on the net. Quickly noticed one for sale on Baldwins web site. Apparently very rare due to the pellets in the band of the crown. Looked at mine, and four pellets in the band of the crown. Theirs a poorer example than mine, on sale at £500. Full id Henry VIII half groat, Canterbury mint 1544-7, S.2378, N.1852. ref Baldwins coins FG 45471. Just took another picture under house lights, so blurred, but you can clearly see the pellets in the band of the crown. Going to look through collection for more debased hammered silver coins, you never know.
Robert.
Robert.
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