First Barber Quarter

A

archaeon

Guest
as i was driving to work one day last week, i noticed that a 1/4 mile worth of sidewalk had been ripped up along our vinoy basin. this little basin is on tampa bay and serves as a tiny harbor. the 1920's vinoy hotel faces the basin. i recently bought a tejon and was taking it out for the third time with buddy tomclark. there was only a four foot strip of sand, so we divided it in half, me on the left, tom on the right. we each had a 1/4 mile long 2 foot strip. we got a total of about 6 silver dimes, a few wheaties and smack in the middle of the strip was my first barber. i couldn't believe it! it has some crust on it, but after a cleaning, it came out very nice. i cleaned it using the method of boiling water, baking soda and tin foil strip bath. followed by a gentle straight baking soda rub. these methods reportedly don't take any silver off. sorry i didn't take a before pic, but the transformation was incredible! i did not scratch the coin at all, scooped it out with my hand. all scratches are very light, but seem to be more noticable in the macro pics than when looking at it normally. my first barber quarter, and it is on it's 100 birthyear!
and to top it all off, it's a 1909 -o!
excuse me, i'm off to detect here in winter....it's cold...will be in the mid sixties here :icon_pirat:
sorry, just had to say it! :D :wink:
 

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Way to pounce on an opportunity. It definitely paid off...

Congrats on your first Barber Q.

As for the "it's cold...will be in the mid sixties here" comment. Well, it was -5 when I got up this morning. Needless to say 60 degrees would be very welcomed around these parts !!!!

Now, get back out there and enjoy that heat wave....

Brian in MA
 

Congrats on the Barber and it was -1 yesterday ,I feel for you an the 60 degree weather !!!!!! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
 

Congrats on that SWEET barber quarter! I'd like to understand that cleaning method better. Can you elaborate more on the process?

Jim
 

Congratulations on your first barber! That's a great opportunity when the sidewalks are tore up. We're buried in snow here in eastern Ohio with below zero temps so i don't have much sympathy for your 60 degree "cold" ;D HH and hope it warms up for ya :icon_sunny:
Jerry
 

time4me said:
Congrats on that SWEET barber quarter! I'd like to understand that cleaning method better. Can you elaborate more on the process?

Jim
Click to expand...

Jim,
I am no expert by any means, buddy Tom knows alot more about it than i do and this was a method he looked up online, it reportedly does not take any silver off. i didn't notice anything come off except the grime and crap attached to it.
here's what we did:
take a small pot(we used a 6 inch diameter, 4 inch high pot), fill with water about 3/4. take a sheet of aluminum foil and crunch it down in size, to fit in the bottom of the pot, i guess this acts as a sort of floating base to catch coins if you drop them and also the aluminum has something to do with the reaction. push the foil down so it conforms to the bottom of the pot and reaches the sides of the pot so there is no room for stuff to fall underneath. you want the foil submerged as much as possible, it will float a little.
next, take another sheet of foil and cut it into strips about half inch wide so you end up with ten or so strips about 10 to 12 inches long. cut them in half so they fit in the pot better.
next, get the water to a boil.
next, add 1/2 cup of baking soda.
next add strips of aluminum foil on top of the base foil, make it like a nest, with the strips evenly placed around(we just took them and shoved'em on top)
push everthing underwater with a WOODEN spoon(just to mix it a little), don't use anything metal, unless its a silver spoon.

while the "foil soup" is boiling, take the coin you want to clean and dip it in the water for a few seconds and remove. i lightly rubbed the coin with my thumb each time. you could see the crap coming off right away. it's hard to hold the coin with your fingers due to the boiling water, so i used a wooden clothespin, making sure not to get the metal in the water. i would soak the coin, rub, rinse with water, turn the coin in the clothespin to get the whole surface of the coin. sometimes i would soak the coin for as long as five seconds, remove, gently rub with thumb.
i was nervous to do it too much, no matter what they said about it not removing silver. so i did it till the crud was gone, but there was still some discoloration.
since i am not going to sell the coin, i decided to try to get some of the discoloration off as well.
i did this by putting some baking soda in my palm and adding a few drops of water to make a paste. i gently rubbed the coin inbetween my fingers with the paste. i did this and rinsed a few times till i liked what i saw.
i was amazed! you couldn't see half of this coin prior to this cleaning! couldn't even see the "o", it was so crudded! and look what came out! thanks Tom!
 

archaeon,
"sidewalk ripped up." ;D :thumbsup:

Big CONGRAT on that first Barber;
hope you find many more.

have a good un.........
SHERMANVILLE
 

Congrats on that Barber!

Way to go keeping your eyeballs peeled for opportunities. It sure paid off.
Keep Cool!
Mike
 

Congrats on your first Barber quarter. It sure cleaned up nicely. I'm still looking for any silver quarter, so you're way ahead of me. :wink:

HH,

Dr. Ace
 

"it's cold...will be in the mid sixties here sorry, just had to say it! "
Sure you did.....................well..............I am happy for you that you are haviving nice weather.
....................and Congradulations on that Barber as well
 

thanks everyone! and i was only joking about the weather, i know we have it lucky down here, and i truly feel bad for you guys that can't get out and detect in the freezing weather.....i would go nuts! so just move to florida? ahhhh, but then you wouldn't get the old coppers! we get to detect more down here, but that doesn't help much because it's few and far between down here. we need to detect alot more just to find the good stuff. happy hunting all!
ps- i can't recieve pm's, email me if needed at [email protected]
 

Real nice first Barber quarter there Nic! BTW if you smell rotten eggs when cleaning silver with that method it is normal and working. Don't overclean. We clean our silver because they look better and we won't be selling them. Always check for rare date, etc. before cleaning at all boom.

Here's the Silver Sidewalk. Four silver dimes for me.

VinoyBasinSidewalk.jpg
 

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